


Cultural differences, and other uses for bloodsport

by Reavv



Category: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Video Game), Middle-earth: Shadow of War, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon Slavery, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Foursome - M/M/M/M, M/M, Orc Culture, Orcs, Pain Relief Porn, Sadomasochism, Slave Culture, Slow Burn, eventual gross orc romance, f/f - Freeform, m/m - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-12 15:46:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11740170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reavv/pseuds/Reavv
Summary: The Ranger is gaining notoriety among the masses of Mordor's army, but it's for all the wrong reasons.





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> You know that moment when it's 4 am and you're watching youtube videos for a game you haven't even played, and you keep thinking to yourself:
> 
> "Wow, these orcs are seriously sexually repressed/deviant, and like to flirt with the main character a lot" and then that devolves into "Wow, orc society seems to just love Talion. He's undying, he loves violence, he puts orcs on their knees and brands them..." and then that just turns into 
> 
> "Hey, let's make a gross romance fic about all the orcs falling in love with Talion. Because why not." 
> 
> Fair warning for eventual sex, more violence, Uruk styled bdsm, and a complete and total fucking with canon. I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not.
> 
> (I blame you, Tsurai.)

Like most things to do with Uruks, it starts with violence. A very specific type of violence, to be fair, but violence all the same. 

Before the Ranger gets the names Gravewalker, and Tark, and Skinchanger, before he becomes anything but a man in the eyes of the Uruks of Mordor, Lûgdash the Clever becomes the first to survive his rage. It’s luck, and his own paranoia that saves him: where his brothers stumble blindly for more grog and pass out in the open, Lûgdash keeps himself to the edges of the ruins, atop a crumbling pillar. He’s fingering his daggers, an eye on the shadows for rival attacks, when the first Uruk dies. 

A wraith, it looks like, or some spectre of the dark here to drag them back down into the mud. It happens fast, a swing of a sword and the release of a blue-white arrow to fell half of his brothers’ slow and dumb bodies. But it is a man standing there, after, with blood-soaked clothing and a blank face. A ranger. 

Lûgdash fights, for in the beginning he thinks it some upstart Gondolian from beyond the wall here for glory. He thinks it will be an easy fight, considering the men he has faced before. 

He’s wrong. 

It’s a fight for the ages, the kind that sets the heart pumping and the bloodlust soaring. The man is relentless in his strikes, quick to dodge or block, able to use some sort of ghostly magic. Everytime he thinks he’s gotten him low, he comes up swinging again, seemingly twice as powerful. 

There’s a moment when Lûgdash finds himself on his knees, blood dripping down his face, and finds himself staring up into the man’s eyes. The only thing that could make it better would be if the man were to respond to his taunts. But no, there is very little emotion on the Ranger’s face, and that’s what clues him in first. 

The ranger isn’t trying. Lûgdash and his brothers are nothing to him, he looks almost bored in the light of the fire. It is more than confidence.

Lûgdash quickly realises that he has miscalculated. 

It’s the sort of thing that could enrage an Uruk. It’s also the sort of thing that would kill a lesser one: Lûgdash the Clever knows the value of retreat. He doesn’t bother to announce it, just trips and throws one of his still-alive brothers into the path of the Ranger’s strike and dashes upright, running across the open field. It’s folly to try and outrun someone with a bow, however, so he veers towards the cliffs and scampers up the ledges towards safety. 

There’s a pause behind him, as if the Ranger is debating the merits of chasing after him, but just then Lûgdash’s captain appears from the other direction, yelling obscenities. Lûgdash wishes him the best of luck, and by luck he means death. 

By the morrow Lûgdash will have been promoted to his then-captain’s spot, the last living Uruk of his company, and it will be because of some man with a spectral hand. 

It would be too much to think that it was deliberate: that Lûgdash’s life was spared and he gifted him the position, but he can’t help thinking about it. At any point in the fight the man could have gutted him, but instead it was almost as if he was toying with him.

It...interests him. 

—

It becomes a theme that’s whispered about around the campfire with salacious leers. The ranger with the white hand puts Uruks on their knees, and sometimes doesn’t even kill them. Some of the captains walk out of fights with him with a sort of maniacally devoted light in their eyes, and some just die. And it quickly becomes apparent that he picks the ones he considers to be strong to join him: the ones that survive a fight or two first. 

It becomes something of a boastful thing, to survive a fight with the Ranger. It’s almost as enviable as actually killing him. 

Because he doesn’t stay dead. Because he comes back. Because no matter how you twist the blade in his gut, the next night he’ll be tracking you down for vengeance. 

How thrilling. How exciting. 

It’s the sort of thing an Uruk could dream of. 

“Rumour has it the Ranger is after Goroth Flame-Bringer, lucky bastard. I hear he’s still angry about the last duel,” an Uruk says by the campfire, with a grin a shade too envious to truly be bloodthirsty.

“How’s Rûg feel about that?” Another asks, idly cleaning his teeth with a shard of bone.

“Enraged,” the first Uruk says with a laugh, “seems to think he’s the only Uruk strong enough to be the Ranger’s nemesis.”

A roar of laughter erupts over that, Uruks toasting with grog and caragor meat.

Lûgdash stays quiet, hood pulled down to his eyes. His Urukp don't notice: used as they are to his more reticent nature. His eyes are not on the merriment of the camp, but on the shadows a little further afield. He's not sure, but he thinks he sees something moving in the dark. It’s moving away from the camp, but towards one of the fortresses further north, and he can feel his heart jolt when he realises who it is. 

The Ranger, off to kill more captains. 

Although it would be more fitting for a captain to send one of his Uruk and stay at camp to oversee it’s running, Lûgdash quietly stands and slinks away himself. His Uruk pay no heed, and he knows none of them are ambitious enough to make trouble. He might come back to a corpse or two, but it will be from drunken anger and not any true plotting. 

The night is tepid, humid with rain that will never reach the ground and with a dead air that presses heavy on his skin. He shuffles along the barren rock, eyes only just able to see the shadow in their midst. Luckily he doesn’t have to follow it for long; the Ranger is obviously aiming for the keep, and although stealth is a tool in his arsenal he tends to disregard it at least once during his raids. At some point tonight Lûgdash will find him, probably covered in blood and with some poor Uruk’s head at his feet.

He grins. 

It’s startling to realise how boring fighting among Uruk has been these past few months, how stale. Even the usual rivalry for captaincy and warchiefdom has been stagnant, the sort of thing Uruk do because they don't know what else to do. The fight against men is only slightly better, although the carnage is sweeter there are few who can match their might. 

He passes under the crumbling stone pillars that prelude the fortress walls, and instead of heading in straight away he shifts to the right, hand trailing the rough stone. If he walks around the main gate, there’s a gap about two Uruk wide that is rarely guarded, and he has a feeling that will be the path his Ranger will take. The wooded walkways that connect the broken stone will be his first stop: ghostly bow in hand. 

He finds his first Uruk corpse at the bottom of one such ledge and has to grin at the sight. It doesn’t look like someone strong enough to be resurrected, but at least he had a good death. Not an easy one, based on the wounds, but a good one. 

The blood trail makes it easy to locate the next body. And the next. And the next. A true breadcrumb trail of entrails. 

Lûgdash is suddenly hungry, and it propels him forward faster. 

“Shrakh!” The yells comes from further in, the sound of steel hitting steel. Lûgdash lunges forward and then propels himself up the stone, onto the wooden platform overlooking the courtyard. Sure enough, more bodies, more blood, and a dark cloaked figure splattered with mud. 

“You might be able to kill one Uruk, but I have hundreds behind me!” Horhog the Black-Blade yells, waving his sword. Lûgdash has to wonder what Uruk he is talking about, since most of his battalion seem to already be dead. 

The Ranger doesn’t respond, only readies his blade, and Lûgdash kneels down for a better view. Scar-marked hands, a strong grip, the hatred and skill of a thousand Uruk. 

Truly the Ranger is a sight to see. 

More Uruk come rushing in, although it is a pitiful amount considering the usual horde of forces in fortresses. Tellingly, most of them hesitate at the edges of the courtyard, dancing back and forth on their feet, eyes riveted on the sight in front of them. Most of them have probably never seen the Ranger before. 

Horhog is an adequate fighter, a combat master and duelist that knows his way around his swords, but the Ranger is not one to fight fair; from behind a giant bellow erupts and another Uruk rushes into the fight, glowing brand still burning. 

Lûgdash sighs. What a brash sign of ownership. And one that seems to only show in the midst of battle. A scar of blood if he’s ever seen one. 

Horhog stumbles from the combined force of the Ranger and the other Uruk, but he barely flinches from the wound. Black blood splatters the ground, quickly seeping into the parched soil. 

“Traitor!” Horhog yells, sword flying. The unnamed Uruk smiles a bloodstained grin and attacks again, unheeding of the gash he gets in return.

The Ranger hangs back, circling the two, bow in hand. Lûgdash is not sure what he means to do with it. Arrows will do little against an Uruk of Horhog’s strength, and although the Ranger is not one to care about collateral damage, he also is not a man willing to sacrifice his advantages. 

And then something interesting happens. 

An arrow is notched and drawn, but it is not aimed for the two battle-locked Uruks. Instead, high above their heads, a Morgai Fly nest goes bursting in flame, and the swarm descends. 

Lûgdash is confused at first, and then sadistically amused as he watches Horhog the Black-Blade yell and stumble, arms waving, frantic fear in his voice. 

Still the Ranger watches, even as his thrall lurches in the fleeing captain’s direction. The expression is hard to see in the dark, but Lûgdash imagines he shares at least some of his amusement at the sight. The Ranger has shown surprisingly sadistic tactics in the past, a sort of toying fighting style that weakens an Uruk over the period of days, stalking and killing their men, poisoning the grog, exposing their weaknesses. 

“Weakling,” a voice behind him grumbles, and Lûgdash flinches back, turning with his daggers drawn. He hadn’t heard a thing, and he has keen ears. It becomes even more surprising when he sees who it is. 

Rûg Bright-Eyes is a giant of an Uruk, more mass and height than one normally sees even in a race prone to war. He has a surprising amount of hair for an Uruk too, a mane of coarse strands that twist into knots in the back. 

“You talking about me or the shrakh that just fled?” Lûgdash asks, inching away from the edge. Rûg isn’t necessarily known for his temper, but that doesn’t say much for an Uruk. 

“Both,” he says, pushing past to peer over the edge. The Ranger is still there. Lûgdash eyes him. 

“You gonna try your luck? I hear you have the most kills so far,” he asks, sliding farther away but restraining himself from running. Bad manners to appear weak in front of someone who’s technically a peer. 

“I like seeing the light die in his eyes,” Rûg says monotonously. Lûgdash snorts. He bets he does, obsessive beserker that he is. 

“...how does it feel?” he asks eventually, when it looks like the other Uruk is content to watch the Ranger clean up the last remaining fighters. Rûg turns his head slowly to eye him, face carved like a stone and eyes burning like fire. 

“Killing him? A little like dying,” Rûg says, after a few seconds of staring, before turning his attention back towards the courtyard. The Ranger has the last standing Uruk in a punishing grip, wraith hand lit up and searing across his face. Lûgdash feels himself shiver at the sight, unease crawling down his back. 

Rûg abruptly straightens from his crouch, large body tense with anticipation. Lûgdash feels his own muscles twitch, and he hurriedly backs away from the Uruk, merging back into the shadows. 

“Tark!” Rûg yells as he jumps from the platform, landing with crash a few feet from the Ranger. 

“How many times must I kill you before you give up?” he says, pointing to the man with one of his axes. Lûgdash feels his eyebrow raise. How oddly tame of a greeting from an Uruk known for being a few eccentricities away from being called the Mad.

The Ranger doesn't answer, not verbally, although Lûgdash thinks he sees some hesitation in the strike he aims Rûg’s way. Mayhaps the Ranger is getting tired of dying by the Uruk’s hand, but if he didn't want a nemesis he shouldn't make it so interesting.

Safe in the shadows Lûgdash leans forward a little more. He hasn't seen the Ranger’s death yet, and he wonders how it works. If you chop the body up does it reassemble later? What if you burn it? Bury it? Cook it into a stew?

The clash of swords brings him back to the present, and to the two fighters below. Lûgdash can’t help but think that trying to fight against Rûg is a little like trying to fight against a mountain. One that’s much faster than it should be. 

The Ranger apparently agrees, and although he is strong, strong enough to cut a bloody swath across the land and leave the severed heads of captains at his feet, he is not quite at Rûg’s level. It’s a close thing, but even whatever wraith-like powers he holds aren’t a match for someone who’s only still a captain because of a lack of ambition. All the camps know that he would be a warchief by now otherwise. 

But it’s a close thing, and for the first time ever, Lûgdash sees Rûg the Bright-Eyes bleed. A flurry of blows by the Ranger has even him being pushed back, axes raised in a block that breaks after the fifth strike. 

“Filth!” Rûg yells, dodging the next blow, but the Ranger just pushes forward. Whatever sword he wields is strangely durable, and it shines in the moonlight like Mordor-crafted steel never will. It’s made out of metal that has had all its impurities burned out, and it seems unbreakable in the Ranger’s hands. 

The same cannot be said for even Lûgdash’s own weapons, although he tries more than his Uruk at keeping them whole. Like most captains he is fond of his weapons, and his alone. No replacement will do. 

Perhaps enraged at being bloodied, Rûg releases a roar at the Ranger and pushes him back with his own attack, the thin film of bloodlust in his eyes. From Lûgdash’s point of view, it looks like the Ranger’s defences could use some work. But then again, what use are defences for a being who cannot die and who does most of his killing with stealth? 

Whatever the case, it takes only a few more minutes of back and forth before a stumble has the Ranger falling, a line of red across his chest. 

“You disappoint me, pink-skin. How many times do I have to kill—” There’s the sound of steel hitting steel, and then the wet sound of an arrowhead hitting flesh. The whole courtyard is dead silent, as they watch the blood seep out of Rûg’s leather breastpiece. Even the Ranger looks surprised. 

Rûg stumbles back, and the Ranger quickly takes advantage, bursting upwards out of his crouch, knocking the Uruk down and quickly sprinting past him, vaulting over the only Uruk with a bow as he does so. Lûgdash is probably the only one who sees him toss a sarcastic wave at the Uruk’s stunned face, as the others, who have just arrived, are too busy staring at Rûg’s slowly darkening expression.

“Traitor! Show yourself!” the captain yells, stumbling upright. As one the Uruk scatter, which is clever of them really, considering there’s no way for Rûg to have memorised their faces, considering how alike they all are. 

The Uruk with the bow tries to escape as well, but Lûgdash figures that’s too merciful for a soldier who can’t even aim at a downed man. It takes but a few daggers to pin him in place, one in his ankle as he runs away to trip him and two more to the knees as he falls and clutches at the wound. 

He jumps down from the rampart, landing a few feet away from the screaming Uruk who’s trying to crawl away. 

“I think this is the shrakh you are looking for,” he says, pointing a dagger at the Uruk, “although I do not think he is one of the Ranger’s. He should be punished anyways, for his horrible aim.” 

“You!” Rûg shouts, stomping across the courtyard. Lûgdash would almost feel sorry for him, but really, that sort of aim is past even being disgraceful, especially when you don’t follow it up with an actual attack and try to usurp the captain you just shot. 

“I will make you bleed for this,” said-captain says through his clenched jaw, reaching down to pick the archer up with one meaty hand. 

“I didn’t mean it! I swear! I was aiming for the Gravewalker! He somehow deflected—” the Uruk’s body goes flying, landing with a wet thunk against the stone. 

“The. Ranger. Is. Mine.” The words are enforced by the thud of reinforced steel boots hitting flesh. By the end of it the Uruk is alive, but just. 

“And you!” Rûg whirls around, pointing his bloody axes at Lûgdash. The arrow is still embedded in the flesh of his shoulder, but it appears to do little at slowing him down. 

“What? I wasn’t the one that interrupted!” he cries, skipping back. The larger Uruk glares at him for a few tense heartbeats, before the weapons lower. 

“You are the captain of the South Reach camp, yes? I will remember you,” is all Rûg has to say before he starts dragging the unconscious Uruk away and towards his own camp. Lûgdash watches him lumber away and has to shake his head, sheathing his daggers as he does. He doesn’t think that sounds like a declaration of rivalry, but one never knows. Uruk have started raids over much less. 

He’ll have to train his Uruk up in the coming days, and keep an eye on the grog. Rûg the Bright-Eyes is not one to use poison, but any others who smell a brewing rivalry could come out of the woodwork for their own chance of glory. 

—

Takra the Ruinous is, counter to his name, not a giant of an Uruk as most might expect. In fact, he is very much of average height, and girth, and intelligence. His arms as just the right size to wield the heavy wood and steel shield of a defender, and his brain is just large enough to know when a fight is over, thank you very much. 

Example. 

“You think you can defeat me? Me who—” Splat. Spear in gut, shield in face. Dead Uruk. 

“Well?” Takra asks with boredom, staring at the others gathered around the now-dead captain. He was a disgrace for a captain, to be fair. 

“Eh, didn’t like ‘im anyways,” one of them mutters, and soon the others are joining in. 

“Takra! Takra!” The chant lasts just long enough for the Uruk to be sure they know the name of their new leader, and then the milling groups disperse to continue either shirking their duties, or bullying others into doing them for them. 

Takra kicks the corpse closer to the fire and surveys his kingdom, if a kingdom can be a miserable camp on the east side, far from any fortresses and glory. It’s not much, and there’s always a drought of grog, but at least he doesn’t have to listen to Bûbol the Whiner any longer. And maybe this way he’ll actually be able to rise in the ranks and get out of the stinking filth of slaves and caragor cages. 

Or, he muses, just let the Ranger do his work for him and step into the void that he leaves behind. That was how Bûbol got his post, after all, and if a pathetic Uruk like him can get a free ride, someone who can actually lift a spear should be able to do even better. He just has to survive long enough and the way will be made for him. 

Just the kind of work he likes: minimal. 

“Wraith!” the yell comes from a scout running in from the west, spear clutched to his chest like some sort of pink-skin toy. 

“What?” he snaps, turning towards the Uruk. In the distance something explodes, drowning out the reply. Before the Uruk can run further into the camp though, Takra snags the bag of his leather vest and shakes him. 

“What?” he repeats. 

“The Wraith! He’s beheaded Goroth Flame-Bringer! The whole camp is dead!” the scout says in a rush, the green cast of fear a thick sheen over his eyes. 

Takra grunts, throwing the scout away. Goroth Flame-Bringer’s camp is not far from this one, close enough that he can just make out the frantic Uruk running about on fire, slowly being picked off one by one.

“How many captains is that, now?” one of his Uruk asks, as a crowd slowly forms to watch the spectacle. 

“How is he getting them so fast? The last one was all the way over by the Black Gate!” another mutters, and soon the whole lot of them are gossiping like a bunch of pink-skins by the fire. 

“You gonna go after him, Boss?” 

Takra surveys the slowly dying scene in the distance and scoffs. 

“You know how much bother the Ranger is to fight? Why do you think I picked a shield as my weapon? Pah, we’ll wait for the fuss to die down and then take that camp as ours. More grog and meat for us, eh?” 

The cheer goes up at that, and most of the Uruk settle down again. Although they might be itching to fight the Ranger themselves, most of them are from Takra’s own stock. The human has already shown himself to be too much bother, and until he comes calling for Takra’s own head, there’s no point in testing who would have the upper hand. 

Besides, it takes work to build up a camp large enough to truly be a challenge for the human who cannot die. Takra will make sure it is more than just a challenge. The Gravewalker deserves at least that much, for the amount of entertainment he’s brought to Mordor. 

—

Not much is known about the Uruk of Mordor. Servants of the Dark Lord, with voracious and dark appetites; the weapons of war that brings fear into the hearts of men. 

What sort of society do creatures like that have? How do they live together? What sort of people are they when all that they know is war and strife and violence? 

What sort of desires, wants, fears do they harbour in their hearts? Are they capable of emotion? Do they know anything but their base instincts? 

Do they covet things, do they build bonds? 

After all, they are supposedly the twisted forms of elves and men, turned to the dark. And men and elves do all those things. And it is not just the dark that hunt and hurt and bleed. 

Talion does all those things. He cuts into their ranks like a meat hook and carves away what he will, for his will. Celebrimbor uses his powers to further a cause that, in the Uruks’ minds at least, is all about blood and vengeance and death. 

And Uruks know war. Does it matter who is at the helm when the horns blow? Does it matter that a man is the one who builds them up? Who leads them? Who sates their desire for meat and blood and power? 

Uruks will love a man if he brings them glory.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for....Uruks in general, I guess. And OCs. Also some pain relief porn, because I screwed up my back and I just want a strong Uruk to pound it back into place. Oh, also for the fact that SOW has slavery as a main theme, and yet doesn't actually develop it at all. I'm trying to approach it delicately, but y'know

Talion knows the value of rumour. Knows the sort of information that can be gleaned from listening on his enemies’ idle words. Normally, however, he ignores all the talk about himself. After all, he already knows what he’s doing, there's nothing to learn from the wild tales the Uruk whisper about his kills and deaths. 

Usually, that is. 

“If the tark is so powerful, how come he hasn't killed the warchiefs yet?” One of the Uruks under him says, completely oblivious to the fact that the subject of his gossip is crouching above his head. 

“He did—the ones at the Black Gate, at least,” another points out. 

“Pah. Any Uruk who dies at a pink-skin’s hand can’t be considered a true warchief,” the first one replies, spitting at the fire. Talion determines he's the first one that's going to die, just as soon as his captain shows up and he can start the fight. 

“I think it's probably because he’s too busy getting slapped around by Rûg and freeing slaves,” the third puts forward, leaning against his spear like it's a crutch. 

“Slaves! What does he even do with them?” 

“Hopefully not eat them—what’s a dead man need meat for?” 

“I don’t think men eat men.” 

“Yeah, but he’s not really a man, now is he?” 

All the Uruk turn to look at the last straggler, curled by the fire. 

“Whadd’ya mean? A man’s a man’s a man.” 

The Uruk shrugs. 

“Yeah, but he don’t act none like a man,” the fourth says. 

“...well, he does like killing things a lot. And setting them on fire. And cutting them. And making them kneel and beg for their life. But that’s not necessary un-man-like.” The Uruk sounds a little uncertain though, like he doesn’t really know what’s man-like in the first place. 

“And he’s a wraith,” another puts forward. 

“—and he’s a wraith, yeah.” 

There’s silence for a few minutes, and Talion thinks that will be the end of it, and then—

“...I saw him gut an Uruk on the ground by grabbing his ankles.” 

“Gutting? Well I saw him take an Uruk’s head clean off,” another cuts in, and Talion has to raise a brow at the way the whole group perks up. 

“That thing where he crushes heads with one hand—” 

“Always jumping down from up high—”

“Used wraith magic to burn—” 

“Saw him knock a captain to the dirt—”

“Rides caragors—” 

“—rides graugs—”

“Enough.” The words come from the entrance of the ruins, where a captain in red armour glares at them all. 

“Enough yapping, you’re supposed to be guarding,” the Uruk says, pointing a poison-tipped spear their way. The group jumps away from the fire like they’ve caught aflame and start arranging themselves semi-attentively. Talion watch them wander off, dispersing like flies whose nest is cut, and then turns his attention back to the captain. 

He doesn’t let the Uruks’ words bother him, even if it does veer a little too much into appreciation for his comfort. He has bigger prey to hunt.

Talion notches an arrow and aims his sight on the captain, who’s turned from the fire and is now looking away. Celebrimbor’s voice in his ear tells him all he needs to know, how the ridiculous helmet will cave under the force of the wraith arrow and the flesh underneath will spill like rotten meat. 

After spending the night fighting—and almost losing—against Rûg the Bright-Eyes with his immunities, it’s a nice respite to finally find someone weak to ranged attacks. 

It still takes the equivalent of a full quiver before he dies, which just makes the fact that it also takes that long for his warriors to realise what’s going all the more pathetic. 

As the camp goes fleeing in terror, Talion jumps down to snag the back of the chatty Uruk’s armour. He promised to kill him first, after all, and now that the captain’s dead, someone has to take his place. If the post comes with a ticking time bomb, all the better. 

“Any Uruk who dies by a pink-skin’s hand doesn’t deserve to be a warchief, hmm? In that case, congratulations are in order, because you’ve just been promoted.”

-

Although Takra would like to be there every time the Ranger destroys a captain, if only so he can steal the remaining supplies and Uruks, he’s able to recognise when the danger isn’t worth the risk. Such as when even following in the wake of the man brings him into the crosshairs of one of the largest power struggles he’s seen in a very long time. 

A few days after killing a hunting captain, the Uruk who took his place and his promotion to bodyguard strikes down his own Warchief. He dies in the process, but not before the Ranger collects Ogol the Mighty’s head. Now there’s a void as Uruk scramble to take his place, killing each other in hopes of being found worthy. 

Which means here Takra stands, leaning against a rival captain’s tent and listening for guards. Takra wasn’t meant to be an assassin, nor is stealth easy when he’s carrying around a giant shield that tends to bump into things, but needs must. And he needs this captain dead so that he’ll stop sending raiding parties against Takra’s Uruk in hopes of forcing them into service. 

There’s a battle cry that roars up from ahead of him, as his Uruk and the camp’s finally meet, and he pulls away from the tent. The chaos of an ambush should ensure that he meets little resistance as he continues, especially if his Uruk were able to poison the grog before they were found. 

It’s a clouded night, the glow from the fires and braziers the only thing illuminating his way, so maybe he can be excused for not seeing the slave before he’s practically on top of it. It’s half hidden in a bush, just off to the side from another tent, and he’s not sure which of them is more surprised when their eyes lock. A female, he thinks with surprise, as he blinks down at her in the tall grass, with blood on her hands and a torn, ratty dress. 

“Fuck off, orc,” she spits, clutching at a rusty dagger. The body she’s obviously just finished stabbing groans faintly, slumped where it is under her crouching figure.

“If the taskmaster sees you he’s gonna kill ‘ya,” Takra says slowly, surprise bleeding into amusement. Slaves aren’t supposed to have weapons, not that that’s ever stopped them from stealing some. Usually though, they run screaming when they’re found out, especially if they’re alone. This one has guts. 

“Can’t kill me if he’s dead,” she snarls out, kicking the body under her in the head. Takra blinks again and scrutinises the slumped-over Uruk. Scarred face, serrated armour, bones scattered on the dry ground. A Skull Collector, cut down. 

Well, that explains why this ambush is so quiet, if the captain was killed before he even arrived. Done in by his own slave, huh. He must have drunk some of that poison after all, because there’s no way a scrawny thing like her would have been able to get the drop on him otherwise.

The girl is shaking, hands white-knuckled on her little shiv, and he has to wonder for a second why she did it. Can't have been to escape, because she’s still here. This looks personal. 

“He’s not dead yet,” Takra point out, digging his spear into the ground and leaning his weight on it, “you missed his heart. It’ll take too long for him to bleed out like that.” 

The girl glares at him and, without looking away from Takra, stabs her little rusty sword back into the other captain, just shy of his lungs. The body gurgles weakly. 

“Well, it’s not a clean kill, but that’ll speed it up,” he snorts. The girl breaks eye contact to frown down at the still-alive Uruk.

“That killed the other one,” she mutters. 

“Was the other one human? Uruk can handle a lot more damage, especially a captain,” he points out with a shrug. At her startled look he gestures to her bloody clothes and skin. 

“All that’s red blood, and it don’t look none like it’s yours.” 

The girl glares at him a few seconds more, before another twitch from under her has her flinching back. 

“If you wanna speed things up a bit, i’d suggest going for the neck,” Takra offers up. 

“Why’re you helping?” She asks him suspiciously, although Takra notes that she does so while slitting the other captain’s throat. Smart enough to know good advice, but not smart enough to run once the deed is done. 

“Was gonna kill him anyways for thinking he could steal my Uruk, but this way it’s less work for me,” he answers with a shrug. “As a gift for doing it for me I’ll even let you go without a fight. I hear there’s some sort of resistance freeing the slaves, you can probably find them if you follow the sound of fleeing men.” 

The girl’s expression twists into even more of a snarl, if that were even possible. 

“A bunch of desperate men with no prospects for wives? I’ve no kin or clan, I’m no queen or warrior princess, they’ll not treat me much better than this sack of meat did. At least with him I didn’t have to worry about being forced to lay with some prick for a little food,” she spits, shifting backwards. There’s history there, Takra surmises, although he’s not sure of the nuances colouring her voice. 

A shout from the still-fighting men in the centre of camp stops him from asking any questions, and he decides he doesn’t care. If her own kind has injured her in some fashion, it’s not his concern. Besides, she’s obviously learned how to deal with her issues like an Uruk would: with violence. 

“Don’t matter none by me, but you’ll wanna scram now. I need that Uruk’s head, and if you wait too much longer you’ll not be going much anywhere without a dozen Uruk on your heels,” he points out, and that’s all it takes for the girl’s common sense to kick in and for her to be off and running down the hill. 

Takra watches her go and shakes his head. Humans’ are strange things. 

He glances down at the dead captain and sighs. He should have gotten her to cut his head off while she was at it, and save him from having to do it. He picks up his spear and weighs it in his hands for a few seconds. The end, made of blackened steel, should be heavy enough. 

In the end it takes two tries to cut through the thick neck, and by the time his Uruk wander back from their slaughter his hands are black with blood and slipping on the grip he has the head in. The sight will cement his power in the region, and he’ll be picking blood flakes out of his nails for days. The first thing he does is appoint a few underlings as lieutenants to deal with the actual running of the place, while he heads back to his own camp, and starts to really think seriously about defending it against the Ranger. 

If a slip of a slave with one rusted dagger can take down a captain, he’s not surprised so many others are dying at the wraith’s hand. Let the others comfort themselves with the thought of their own superiority, Takra will let them hang themselves on their own guts, and in the end, it will be him that stands, free to do as he wishes. 

—

Lûgdash isn’t sure what he expected for the next time he would see Rûg the Bright-Eyes, but it wasn’t playing nursemaid.

“How’d you survive without getting ganked by you own Uruk, with an arm like that?” he mutters, prodding at the dead meat and eyeing the blackened flesh near the shoulder consideringly. 

“Didn’t go back to camp,” is Rûg’s answer, as if two days in the wilderness without a sword arm is any better. 

Lûgdash eyes him suspiciously, and berates himself for his own plotting. If he was ambitious enough he would take this opportunity to kill the stronger Uruk and take his place. Unfortunately, his own cleverness holds him back. Keeping Rûg alive will ensure Lûgdash has him in his debt, and he knows that uninjured, there’s very little that can take the Bright-Eyes down.

With that in mind Lûgdash takes hold of the limb, ignores the voice that says he’s about to die for touching the other Uruk, and wrenches it back into alignment. 

The crunch of Rûg’s shoulder snapping into place is almost drowned out by the subsequent groan that loosens from his mouth, something Lûgdash knows Rûg would normally never let happen. The injury must be more painful than first anticipated, if the normally taciturn Uruk is actually making noise. 

“Hold still,” he grunts, palpating the muscles around the joint, the inflamed tissue hot to the touch. There’s still some grinding going on, and he frowns down at it in concentration. Not just something that can be popped back into place, then. 

“You’ve left it too long,” he concludes, digging a knuckle into the bulging muscle right on top of the shoulder in the vain hope that it will force the joint back into a normal range of movement. 

Rûg doesn’t respond beyond another faint groan, leaning forward a little so that his other arm lands on his bent knees. Lûgdash pulls his injured arm a little further away from his body and continues frowning down at it. Uruk don’t normally get injured like this. Open wounds and broken bones and burns, yes, but their joints and muscles are thick, well-protected things that rarely tear or dislocate. It takes a lot of force to do so. 

“I knew the Tark was strong but this is more damage than even most Uruk could do barehanded,” he mutters, rotating first the shoulder and then the elbow, calculating the damage. Rûg lets him do it, little grunts of pain the only sign that something’s wrong. 

Lûgdash eyes the bigger Uruk with something that’s a shade too pragmatic to be worry. He’s heard that one of the warlords had his head chopped off a few days ago, and that his new bodyguard had betrayed him to the Ranger. Considering the timing of the attack…

Well, it’s not really his business. 

“I think I might be able to at least give you back your grip, but I’m not sure much can be done for the swelling,” he finally concludes, after a few more minutes have passed, “although it will require me to continue touching your back. Don’t kill me for it.” 

Rûg, of course, doesn’t answer, and Lûgdash takes that as an acceptance. He’s not sure exactly what he’s doing, but he’s seen some of the slaves work each other’s muscles like bread when they think there’s no one watching, and it seems to help the ones with nerve damage at least. Not that he’s equating an Uruk of Rûg’s strength and stature to a soft-skin, but he figures they must be masters at this point in time at soothing aches. 

He starts just on the edge of the blackened skin, digging in his knuckle into the tissue and pressing outward. There’s a series of pops as he goes, little clicks of sound that punch out corresponding noises from Rûg’s mouth. As he does he realises that it’s not just the shoulder that’s injured, the Uruk’s whole back is knotted with points of swelling, maybe from carrying the dead weight of his arm everywhere for two days. 

As he passes over one he can feel the breath being punched out of Rûg’s lungs, and he pauses. 

The Uruk doesn’t reach for his axe, or flinch away from his touch, so he presses again. 

“Ngh,” is the eloquent response, and it trails of into a breathy hiss as he presses harder. Lûgdash can feel his brows rise. Let it not be said however that he’s ever given up the opportunity to use what advantages he’s handed, because he quickly brings up his other hand and sets about pressing into Rûg’s other side. 

There’s a loud crunch as he pushes in next to the spine and he finally sees Rûg flinch. But it’s not away from the pain, if anything Lûgdash can feel him arch up into his hands. A second press pops a different vertebrae, this time causing the Uruk to slump forward completely. 

There’s a moment there, where Lûgdash has Rûg in the palms of his hands, and feels something that he has a hard time describing. Power yes, but also something sharp and painful between his ribs, that tastes like still-hot blood behind his teeth. He clamps down on the feeling, grinds it down with every motion of his hands, until the only thing he can taste is his own sweat and the humidity of the night’s air. 

“Try and move it now,” he says, pulling back a bit. 

Rûg grunts and stretches out his neck, rolling both shoulders back testingly, and pulls his injured arm out of Lûgdash’s hands. The first thing he grabs is one of his axes, and Lugdash backs away even more just in case he feels like testing them out on something. 

“...It’ll do,” Rûg says after a few swings, shifting his grip around thoughtfully. The injured arm is still visibly weaker, dark bruise taking up almost all of his affected shoulder, and the Uruk has to be in considerable pain to use it. But at least he can grip his axe again. Rûg turns to face Lûgdash and eyes him speculatively. 

“Right. Well, we haven’t killed each other yet, so let's keep it that way, yes?” Lûgdash says, eyeing him right back. There’s always a chance that the Uruk will take this chance to kill him, after all, in an effort to appear less weak. Especially since this is the second time. Even someone of Rûg’s intellect must realise that there’s something Lûgdash wants at this point. 

“What’s your price?” Rûg grunts, flipping his axes. Lûgdash watches him cautiously. 

“...my camp hasn't been getting supplies, s’been a fortnight and a half, and I’ll have a mutiny on hand if something doesn’t change. If someone could...persuade the quartermaster to send some…” he starts delicately, but Rûg just grunts again and hooks his axes onto his back. 

“You’ve been stealing?” 

“Whatever I can get my hands on without them noticing,” Lûgdash agrees, glad that he’s not asking why the quartermaster has stopped sending his supplies in the first place.

“...what else?” Rûg asks, showing that he does have something of a brain under all the silent staring. 

“Let’s leave it at that for now,” Lûgdash says, smothering a grin sharp enough to cut, “I’m sure I can think of something else next time.” 

—

Ratbag knows the difference between luck and skill, despite what others might think. He knows that he should, by all rights, be dead. The Hammer’s strike would have pulverised his bones and ruptured his heart—but it didn't. 

So here Ratbag lies, half dead and wishing the Hammer would come back and finish the job. Too late for that, since he’s dead and all, but he’s sure someone in Sauron’s army is an adept enough necromancer. Barring that, Ratbag wants the healing to hurry up, already. 

It’s been maybe a month, now. A month of dragging himself to safety and eating the lichen off rocks while his body awkwardly knits back together. The only thing that really saves him is that the Ranger effectively gutted the region; there’s little patrolling and even fewer hunting parties, so he’s able to stay hidden. 

It’s an empty place, Udûn, now that most of the high ranking Uruk are dead. Even the Ranger has fucked off to greener pastures—literally. Ratbag wishes him the best of luck cutting his teeth in Nûrn, even if part of him rankles at the fact that the man didn’t even come looking for him. Stupid of him, maybe, to think their partnership was anything but uneven. 

No eulogies or grief over Ratbag, oh no, no tender human heartstrings being tugged over just another dead Uruk. Nevermind that Ratbag had been loyal, for a value of loyal. Looking out for his own skin, mostly, but by the end there it looked like they might have had a good thing going, for a bit. He got invested, is what he means. 

So maybe Ratbag is a bit bitter about it. Maybe, if the opportunity comes by, he might think of trying to stick a sword into his old friend. Just to share the pain, you know? All friendly like. He’ll kill the Ranger and finally have the respect he’s earned — and it won’t matter none, in the end, because the bastard won’t die. Useful thing, not dying. Not that Ratbag thinks he has much of a chance, though. There was a reason why he originally allied himself instead of trying to doublecross the man, and it had little to do with the promotions he was able to steal out of the Ranger’s dead enemies’ hands. 

Ratbag would have been content enough to lick his wounds in the shadows and leave the Ranger to his bloody quest. He’ll crawl his way up to warchief again, this time without some human man holding a rope around his neck. No more pointy daggers aimed at his throat, no more snide comments, no more orders. 

Ratbag is a free Uruk now. Even the Hammer thinks him dead, and with almost all the other warchiefs dead, there’s no one in his way. 

And then he hears rumours pop up from what’s left of the Uruk stationed in Udûn about the Ranger partnering up with more Uruk; that fire-bright brand of his that he knows from experience twisted even further. 

Ratbag feels something very close to rage at the thought. Ratbag is useless now that the Ranger can just turn others to his side with wraith magic? Well, Ratbag will show him, Ratbag will show everyone. 

...Just as soon as he can breathe without wincing, again. 

The scuttling of some small mammal in the shadows has him groaning, shifting off of the cold rock he’s curled up on. He’s been using the caragor caves during the day as shelter, to keep out of sight and to scavenge from the remains, but they are far from safe at night. The night time he’s forced into the open, taking cover in abandoned camps and tall bushes. Despite all this, the thing he’s most annoyed about is just how quiet it is, no longer in a stronghold or active camp. It amplifies everything else, all the ambient noise hidden under the shouts and clamour of Uruk and slaves. 

Damn right unnatural, it is. 

He drags himself to the opening of the cave, and squints out at the slowly darkening sky. He can just see one of the occupied stronghold’s on the horizon, half-hidden by the shadow of one of the ruins. Not that long ago he was warchief to that stronghold, had the power and respect — however grudging — of the Uruk stationed there. For one glorious moment, he had everything he’d ever wanted in the palm of his hand. Gone now, ground into dust like the broken remains of his armour.

He still aches. The pain in his chest might never ease. There’s no way he’ll be able to defend himself in his current state if he were to go back. Even the prestige of surviving the Hammer won’t save him from his failures. 

Still, if he wants to find the Ranger and get his revenge, he’ll need gear and supplies. Won’t be easy, but if there’s one thing Ratbag the Coward has learn’t how to do well in his years, it’s how to sneak the things he needs from under the noises of larger Uruk. 

Ratbag steps out of the shadows of the cave, the sound of his namesake fading behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

The slave doesn’t leave. Takra watches as she follows his group of Uruk, always staying a good distance away, little sword clutched in hand. It’s a wonder none of his warriors have found her yet, but she’s decent at stealth and Takra’s never been the best at training watchers or lookouts. The fact that he’s noticed has more to do with the current paranoia over the Ranger than any actual skill of his. Still, he’s not sure what to make of her. She certainly doesn’t act like any slave he’s ever seen, not that he normally has much contact with them.

She hunts for herself though, and despite following his caravans and lurking by his camps, she doesn’t do anything. So he figures she can stick around as long as she’s not making a fuss and not being a drain on his resources. He has bigger rats to catch, after all.

“You can’t do this! My Uruk need me!” Bolg Plague-Bringer cries, cowering on the ground by his feet. Takra isn’t sure what he’s on about, really, since his Uruk are already gathering flies beside him. If it weren’t for the fact that there’s a whole tradition behind these executions, Takra wouldn’t bother with all the pomp. It’s having to listen to fools like this that really make him despair for the state of Uruk-kind.

From the corner of his eye he can make out the shape of the slave in the shadows of a nearby archway, idly watching them with a blank expression. He doesn’t turn, although he’s tempted to see what she would do if they actually made eye contact. So far the only times she’s stayed in sight have been times like this, when he’s killing rival captains or upstart warriors looking for promotions.

Instead, he lifts up Bolg by the collar of his blackened armour and shakes him a little, to the cheers of his Uruk. He could stab him with his spear; always a classic. Or break his neck, like his Uruk. The easiest though, would be to just drop him off the cliff and let the caragors clean up his corpse.

Why waste the energy in killing him when gravity will do the job for him?

“Eurg,” Bolg gurgles, just before Takra releases his grip and the panicked Uruk goes tumbling down, screaming. There’s a satisfying splat noise as he hits the bottom, and then ringing silence.

“Takra!” His Uruk cry, banging their shields. A few of them move up to peer over the edge, chittering to themselves over the bodies. Takra doesn’t bother, there’s no way Bolg would survive the drop, not even in armour. And even if he did, without his Uruk he’s not a problem.

“Clean this up,” he says to one of them, “before the flies spoil the meat too badly. Whatever’s usable will go to the camps rations, and whoever can lug all this gear will get first pick.”

There’s a scramble as the Uruk hurry to comply, dragging the corpses away. He waits just long enough that most of them are a good pace away, and then turns to the slave.

“Well?” he asks, leaning on his spear. The slave-girl hunches down a little, hands going to her sword, before she relaxes and shrugs. Her hands stay on her weapon, and he has to approve of her wariness, even if it’s not enough to force her to do the smart thing and leave.

“Could’a used a little more taunting,” is what she says, and Takra finds a laugh escaping his lips before he can stop it.

“What, don’t tell me you’re the kind that lets the enemy get a shot in just so you can say some fancy words?” he says, leaning harder on his spear, digging into the packed dirt.

“No, but you orcs seem to love your dramatics,” the girl says with a snort.

“We do, don’t we,” Takra says with a sigh. “Bunch of bored idiots, really.”

There’s silence for a few minutes as the girl eyes him. Takra lets her, comfortable in his patch of sun and with no real duties to deal with for the moment. At some point he’ll have to go back to camp to make sure his idiots haven’t made a mess of things, and start planning his next conquest, but for the moment he’s free to stand where he is and do nothing.

“Tch,” she finally spits, straightening the final amount that she for once doesn’t look like she’s on the verge of attacking. “If you’re looking for more blood to spill, there’s an idiot out by the slave pens by the name Pâsh Bone-Licker.”

“And why would I be interested in Pâsh Bone-Licker?” he asks idly, eyes lidded but mind sharp.

“ ‘Cuz rumour has it he’s angling for bodyguard status, and he’s been going around killing Uruk almost as fast as you are,” the slave says, “which as far as I’m concerned can only be a good thing, ‘cept he’s aiming straight here, and he ain't the sort of scum that’ll let me be with peace.”

“And let me guess, if he’s gone it’ll be easier for the slaves to escape,” Takra says wryly, but the slave just grins at him with a sharp expression.

“Right,” he says, gripping his spear and pulling it out of the earth, “if this Bone-Licker comes calling, he’ll find a spear in his gut like all the others. Whatever plot you’re cooking up can boil over as long as it doesn’t touch my camps.”

The slave nods once, a sharp, jerky motion, before she shuffles back into the shadows and disappears from sight. Takra has to laugh a little at the space she left, wondering not for the first time just what Mordor is turning into. He’s not sure why he cares, despite the hassle it’s slowly bringing to his plate. With all the chaos it’s only been easier to clean up the lesser ranks, pruning the unworthy from the herd. And he’s able to do it with relative ease, going after larger and larger targets, gaining more and more Uruk and land without any real effort on his part.

“Tarks all over the place, one that won’t die, and one that won’t run. Kicking up morgai fly nests with all their mess. Tch,” he mutters, turning to head back to camp.

He’s not even halfway there before screaming catching his ears, and he pauses in his tracks as a group of Uruk go running past.

“Caragor!” one of them yells in fear, and he feels his brow rise before he sees exactly what’s riding the beast in question.

Takra sticks out his spear and trips the last straggling Uruk—a captain, even, based on his armour—and then steps out of the way as the Ranger’s Caragor pounces. There’s a moment where the Ranger and him make eye contact, something in the air hanging in anticipation, before the beast and man are gone from sight, chasing the other Uruk in the distance.

Takra watches them go, and sighs. He saw the second it took for the man to debate fighting him versus catching up with his prey, and he can only be thankful he valued whatever mission he’s on over more captain-killing. Not that Takra wouldn’t enjoy a fight with the infamous wraith of Mordor, but it’s just the sort of thing he tends to stay away from: difficult.

—

“I’m not saying this a stupid idea, but this is probably the most shrahk-filled plan I have ever heard,” Lûgdash says idly. “Although what sort of tactics I expected from a berserker, I’m not sure.”

“You want your supplies?” Rûg asks.

“Yes, I want my supplies. Somehow, killing the quartermaster doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that will bring timely supply caravans,” he mutters, back pressed against the hard rock of some old ruin. A few paces away the quartermaster in question is hunched over his notes, large, muscle-laden body heaving with wet coughs.

“Kill him, take the supplies,” Rûg says, as if that answers his question in any way.

“And when I need supplies next moon, and there’s no quartermaster?” Lûgdash asks.

“Next quartermaster won’t have this one’s grudge. Threaten him with death if he’s still a shrahk about it,” is Rûg’s suggestion.

Lûgdash thinks about that for a minute. It’s not subtle, it’s not clever. It’s just the sort of thing a Beserker would love, brash and aggressive.

“Ah, what the fuck, s’not like my way has been working. Ok, let’s go kill the lard,” he huffs, pushing off of the wall, “but you’re the one that’s gonna have to deal with him head on. I’ll take care of the archers and guards, but unless I can get behind him my daggers won’t do nothing against his armour.”

Rûg grunts, already unlatching his axes off his back. The sickly glow of their bloodlust—a constant bleeding ichor that drips down on the ground and fizzles in the mud—is a new effect that he must have picked up somewhere since almost dying to the Ranger. Lûgdash idly notes that now both of them have modified weapons, although he’s of the mind that poison is the superior tactic when it comes to it.

“Wait until I deal with the riff-raff,” he says instead of commenting on it, heaving himself up the wall. The camp is surrounded by crumbling tower ruins, and there’s at least five archers that he can see from where he is right now. He calculates his path quickly and then launches up, grabbing hold of the first tower’s ledge.

He can hear the clanking of the archer’s armour, the shuffling of his feet, and he counts the paces until he has the rhythm memorised. One-two, pause, turn. Repeat. He waits for the right moment and then snags the ankle that comes into view just as it appears.

The archer doesn’t even have time to scream before he gets a dagger in the eye and his head smashed into the hard stone. It’s not as quiet as Lûgdash would like, not with the way the armour clanks against brick, but in an Uruk camp it’s quiet enough no one turns to look. He quickly picks up the archer’s crossbow before it can go tumbling off the edge and moves forward to the inner arch of the tower.

From here he can see the next two archers. He eyes the crossbow in his hands thoughtfully. He’s seen the Ranger deal with ten at a time—but no, now’s not the time to experiment with something like that. He throws it away and climbs up to the top of the crumbling tower. He might not be able to stick an arrow in the eye of ten Uruk at once, but his daggers work for more than just sticking people in the side with.

The two go down, almost simultaneously, iron buried in their throats. He quickly notes to remember to pick those up, after.

Two left, now. Plus the guards on the ground. He wonders if there’s an occupied grog barrel somewhere that he can poison…

—

Celebrimbor doesn’t appear all the time. In fact, for most of the fighting and traveling and questing, Talion feels almost alone. But there are some things the wraith feels more strongly about, like ancient elven architecture and whether or not having sex with Lithariel counts as a distraction from their goals or not.

From where Talion sits, up high on one of the ghostly elven towers of his, he thinks that’s just slightly hypocritical. It’s not like Talion was complaining all the times they went off looking for old jewelry and such for Gollum, even when it turned out that the creature was just stringing them along so it could kill them.

And the elf seems perfectly content with letting them team up with Uruk left and right, so how’s that’s better than one human with a pretty face—

“You’re not thinking of sleeping with the Uruk we brand,” Celebrimbor points out. Talion feels his nose wrinkle.

“No, but I’m also not thinking of letting her ride off into the sunset if she tries to kill me,” he snaps. Besides, as much as the elf keeps trying to insinuate that it would be a betrayal to think nicely on the only female face they have seen in months, when they are both on this quest in the first place because of slaughtered wives and children—well, he’s never met Ioreth. Highbred she might have been, but she wasn’t untouched by a pretty face either.

“Besides, I am pretty sure Lithariel has better things to do than tumble with us,” he says, “I’m just saying trying to guilt me into abandoning her mission because you think she’s a distraction is—”

“Yes, yes, alright,” Celebrimbor mutters, interrupting, “I will cease my cautions. As long as we do not tarry much longer with rescues and medicine retrievals.”

“I am not the one tarrying, If you didn’t insist on picking up every forgotten piece of elven lore scattered across the land—”

“You are the one who stops for the broken bits of livery that dot the earth, hungry for the tales of those who have come before—”

“Wait, do you hear that?” Talion peers down at the camp below, suddenly bustling with activity. The captain has obviously returned from wherever captains go when they’re not in camp, and he’s brought a host of hunters with him, the corpse of a caragor dragging behind them. There’s cheering from the warriors, and then the muffled curse of the captain waving them off.

“Don’t we know that one?” Talion asks.

“Lûgdash the Clever,” Celebrimbor says with his usual solemnity. How he knows all these Uruks’ names, Talion doesn’t know and mostly doesn’t care. For all he knows the elf makes them up.

“The one that survived that raid over by the outskirts?” Talion asks, tracking the Uruk as he weaves further into camp. He doesn’t think he’s had many encounters with him; he’s memorable enough that he thinks he would remember. All the...spikes.

“Mm,” Celebrimbor agrees, “I do not think we have gathered much intel on this captain in particular. He’s been rather quiet; no duels, no executions.”

“Hmm,” Talion hums, standing up. “Let us see if we can find out what he has been up to, shall we? I’m not sure I trust an Uruk that’s being _quiet_.”

“The only trustworthy Uruk is a dead one,” Celebrimbor agrees, fading back into the mist. Talion eyes his descent and picks his spot; out of sight of any patrols, and in the shadows of the archer towers. The feeling of free falling still takes his breath, even if the landing is softer than what should be possible from such a height. Wraith magic at work.

He crouches low to the ground and moves in closer to the center of camp where he saw the captain heading. Except he doesn’t see the spiked figure in the crowd of Uruk around the fire.

“Where’s captain getting all this meat?” He hears one of the Uruk ask.

“Why’s you complaining?” another grumbles.

“M’not, s’just a little strange, s’all.”

“Not sure why you’re surprised, Captain’s been plotting for better supplies for ages,” a third chimes in.

“Yeah, ever since he and the quartermaster—” Talion misses the rest of the sentence, because there’s suddenly a blade to his throat.

“What’s this, a rat sneaking in the shadows?” The voice is raspy and deep, deeper than he would expect from a captain so skinny.

Talion lashes out, swiping backwards with his broken sword, earning himself a nick as the captain curses and back steps. He turns quickly, arm readied with a block, but the captain just eyes him warily.

“Don’t suppose we can talk this out? It’s been a rather long night,” the captain says, shuffling to the side, keeping Talion in view. Something about his tone of voice has Talion pausing. As if for once an Uruk would actually just talk it out. Talion supposes the captain does look exhausted enough.

 

“And what would we talk out, Uruk?” he says, somewhat amusedly, stepping closer only for the captain to retreat back again. He feels a brow rise and lengthens his stride, forcing him back even further.

“Oh I don’t know, there’s so much to catch up on,” the captain squeaks, shuffling to the side as Talion lunges forward, sword drawn. “I hear you got to Tûmûg Bag-Head, which is a bit of a pain, if I’m to be honest. No one else was able to keep his rabble in line and now they’re making a mess all over.”

“Are you always this chatty?” Talion grunts, going for his bow.

“Only when I’ve been killing rivals all night and come back to camp to see the Gravewalker mucking up the place,” he replies, snapping a hand out and breaking the incoming wraith arrow in two.

Talion pauses.

“Also, now that we’re outside hearing range of my men, I feel I should warn you; I’m not a fan of theatrics so I’ll have to make this quick.”

Talion doesn’t feel the wound at first, a cut to his arm from a dagger he didn’t even see coming. The slow burning of poison is much more noticeable. He can feel his fingers go numb, slowly slackening his grip on his sword.

He’s able to step out of the way of the next dagger, but that just brings him closer in range to the advancing captain’s reach. He brings up his sword arm in time to block the blow to his ribs, forcing the Uruk back a few steps with a kick that lands on iron armour.

Lûgdash the Clever grins, hand going for the sword at his back. The blade revealed turns out to be a twisted, blackened thing, with a sickly green glow that pulses in time with Talion’s heartbeat. The edge is serrated with long, spiked teeth reminiscent of caragor fangs, and it frankly looks a little comical in the hands of the already-pointy Uruk.

Talion grits his teeth and switches sword hands. His right hand is rapidly losing feeling, and he has just enough strength in it to tuck his useless fingers into his belt.

“We must be careful here,” Celebrimbor whispers in his ear. “If he paralyses both hands, not even my magic will be of use.”

Talion grunts in agreement. The only way he’ll be able to get the upperhand now is if he can either outlast the Uruk, or if he takes the offense now.

There’s only really one option he prefers, here.

—

“She’s mad! A crazed, mad thing!”

The she in particular grins with bloody teeth and spits out the finger that got a little too close to her face. This isn't the first time she’s had to resort to fang instead of claw when it comes to defense, and it won't be the last either. The fact that these Uruk haven’t learned their lesson yet—despite more than a few of them missing fingers—just proves her point. They’re dumb as shit, these beasts.

“Shut up!” one of them snarls, smacking the bleeding one with a meaty fist. “She’s just a slave.”

“I prefer mad thing, myself,” she snorts, backing up a little more. Normally she’s able to avoid patrols like this, or at least stick in territory she knows is slightly safer, but she’s run out of herbs and there’s a festering wound on one of the freemen she’s looking after. Just her luck that she’d run into these idiots.

“An animal!” the bleeding one yells, but he’s drowned out by his compatriots’ battle cries.

She curses, dodging to the side and bringing up her sword just in time to avoid being skewered.

“Fucking shit,” she grunts, snapping her arm up and earning herself a splash of black blood on the ground. The Uruk she wounds screams in rage and throws himself at her, sword swinging. She ducks and lets him go crashing to the ground over her shoulder.

“You bitch!” He grunts, and she steps out of his reach as he staggers up.

“It must sting that you’re going to die to a mad bitch with a sword,” she spits at him, thrusting her sword into his throat. There’s a roar of anger behind her, and she goes skidding across the wet earth as the others rush in.

She spits blood into the ground and trips the first one she can reach, using the momentum to propel her forward and under an arcing blade. She’s lucky, she knows, that these are just grunts with little training. She can swing a sword but that doesn’t make her a swordsman, and against a better-skilled foe she would fare poorly. But rats like these she feels no fear from.

“I’m going to gut you like the dog you are,” one of the last ones says, anger and spite practically vibrating in his voice. She laughs.

“Call me Mad Dog, then, and I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”

—

The road to Nûrn is not easy, especially when he’s still not healed enough to travel all day and night. His only grace is that as the terrain transforms from rock and dust into vine and dew, he finds more easily-accessible food. The dry jerky he stole from the stronghold lasts him for the first part of the trek, but it would not be enough on it’s own.

The walk is a lonely, hard thing, with only the wildness and his own thoughts for company. The days pass in a sort of monotonous grind. His rage wells and crests with his exhaustion, becoming more potent as his legs tremble and his throat dries. It gives him the energy he needs to continue on when his body tries to stop, when his injuries slow him, and when the sounds coming from the shadows make him sure of his own demise.

In every corner he thinks he sees eyes, haunting him.

By the time he stumbles into the plains that open up into the occupied territory of Nûrn, he’s tired and skittish. Nerves burnt to a thread, when he turns a corner and comes face to face with a surprised Uruk lookout, he doesn’t think. His arm seemingly moves on it’s own, body suddenly thrumming with adrenaline.

A splash of black blood, a muffled scream, a head falling slowly to the ground. Ratbag stares sightless at the now dead warrior and thinks, with no little hysteria, that it’s his first true kill. Not a mercy kill cleaning up the Ranger’s mess, not a stolen promotion at the hands of others, not a stabbing in the dark as his fellows sleep.

It should feel like an awakening, an auspicious beginning. He’s shed his old skin, travelled to a new land, and already he’s come out stronger.

He can’t help think it’s a little too good to be true. An invisible wind chills his spine, and he quickly gathers what he can from the now-cooling corpse before scurrying away. There’s a feeling in his gut that twists until he can feel it in the back of his throat, and he’s not sure whether it’s good or bad.

The feeling only grows as he passes further into Nûrn, the lush vegetation and the feeling of mud under his feet a strange and unsettling sensation. He can hear animals in the bush, insects in the air, and far off a caragor call. It’s hotter too, a heavy humidity and clogs the lungs and presses down on his chest.

“Ratbag can’t breathe,” he complains to the still air, tugging at his leathers. It’s probably not that much hotter than Udûn, really, it’s just the humidity makes it feel like it’s about to boil his skin.

He thinks he prefers Udûn, if he’s honest.

He tucks himself into the shadow of two moss covered rocks and leans back, counting his breaths. His chest is healing, finally, but the weather is not doing him any favours. He rubs his throat and spits the phlegm out.

“Now, to find that shrahk-damn Tark…”

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahah oh Mad Dog. You were a joke character and now look at you now


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm adding some future tags after some prompting from my beta
> 
>  

Mad Dog doesn’t particularly like the other freedmen. Not because they’re free, but because they’re men. Even the womenfolk in the rebellion are only slightly more tolerable, if only because they’re less likely to try slipping a hand up her tunic.

That doesn’t mean she doesn't want to see every slaver from here to the Black Gates torn in two. Her hate for her fellow man is only eclipsed by her hate of Uruk. She’s not sure she hates anything more than Uruk, if she stops to think about it. The fact that she’s able to push that aside and actually work—for a given value of work, considering the lack of reliability their relationship has—with one shows, in her mind at least, remarkable restraint.

As she watches the captain—Takra, she’s sure she’s heard his minions call him—rip Pâsh Bone-Licker in two, she has to admit that in this perhaps restraint was a good idea. She’s not so conceited she thinks she would be able to take on every slaver in this cursed land by herself. She has neither the training nor the time; she’s still dodging raiding parties at every step.

If she can send them to their doom by keeping an ear to the gossip and sending a few warnings in the right places, then all the better. In the meantime, the kills she does have the skill to make she does so with relish.

She sees the moment her prey realises they’ve been caught. Elation, at first, at the thought of freedom. The black blood that coats her blade gives them false hope, their jailors cut down and their bonds released. And then the fear creeps in.

“Mer-mercy!” the coward says, as if mercy was ever an option in Mordor. How weak does he see her, that he imposes such ladylike notions on her? He recognises her face, she knows, and the blade at her side. He doesn’t know her name, although the shadow at his side does.

“Ny—”

“Silence,” she snaps, digging the sword into his throat so that a red welt rises up. He doesn’t deserve her name, nevermind that she’s forsaken it into the blood spilt earth.

The shadow, at least, has the mind to keep quiet, but the coward is not so sharp.

“I didn’t know! Please—” he clutches his severed hand, as if anything at this point will save him from the blood loss, and she feels her lips lift in a snarl.

“Please will get you nowhere, or did you stop when my sister cried it into the night?” Mad Dog hisses, drawing the sword tighter across the shadow’s neck. Whatever the coward’s faults, he’s loyal enough not to run. Not with his brother’s life in her hands. There is no love lost between them, but they are bound by traditions she knows too well.

“Did please stop the men in the pit when we were thrown in with them?” she growls, the roots of her teeth aching with the desire to bite.

The man—because he is just a man, pitiful and small and with evil in his heart—sobs harder.

“No-no...no,” he whimpers, and she would be more disgusted by his simpering if she wasn’t more disgusted with herself. This is the monster she feared as a girl? This weak, breakable worm?

“The orcs are the ones who killed your sister,” the shadow whispers, hoarse.

“My sister killed herself on an orc’s blade so that she would not see her thighs run red again.” She can feel the heat of rage crest in her heart. Evil lives in Mordor, that is true. It lives in orcs and slavers and men with desperation in them. It lives in her too. It did not live in her sister.

“And I have killed them all, anyways,” she says as an aside, the clarity of violence hovering over her.

“You can be happy in that, knowing that you will die free men.”

—

She lets the shadow go. It is not mercy, or pity. Her rage is not quenched by making him watch his brother die. Let him feel the pain she feels; let him suffer by living. She gifts him a scar to match the one on her face and releases him into the mud. He is too weak to fight, and she’s not sure he would anyway.

He owes her a life-debt, she knows, and he is just stupid enough to honor it.

He’s the last of her revenge. The brother of the man who sold her family for a bit of respite, only to fall into the pit with them.

“Oh Daina,” she whispers as she watches him limp away, his brother’s broken body in his arms, “what would you think of me now?”

Her hair is starting to grow out of the slave’s crop, the regrowth tickling her scalp. Soon she’ll be able to braid it again, tie the band of mourning around the strands and let go of some of her rage.

The sound of heavy footfalls breaks her melancholy, and she hefts her sword back into something resembling a fighting stance.

“Not gonna finish him?” Takra asks idly, with the sort of slow, rumbling voice that says he doesn’t much care what her answer is. She eyes him and the blood spattering his shield disdainfully before lowering her arm again.

“Not all violence is physical. It will hurt him more to live,” she says, and then pauses. “I am sure you orcs have something similar.”

“Rivals, yeah, or nemeses. Not sure what you would call—whatever that was.”

Mad Dog snorts.

“A long time coming, is what.” Her eyes go back to the horizon. “A decade coming, now. You would think, in a place where the very air tries to kill you, and the ruling class sees you as nothing more than chattel, that at least your fellow man would be trustworthy.”

There is silence.

“Eh, you’re a bitter one,” Takra mutters, sticking his heavy spear in the dirt and leaning on it, as is his wont.

“Don’t mistake me, orc, I will gut any who thinks to chain me. I will go to my kind and free them, and if I happen to spill a little of their blood on the way, well, I am not the lifeless wraith. They are not my kin, and I am not their saviour.”

Takra stares at her for a beat.

“Awfully chatty today,” he remarks.

Mad Dog grimaces.

“Milk poppy, my moons came and the tincture loosens my tongue. Intolerable.”

“I got no clue as to what you just said, but I don’t much care. Now that your slaver is dead, and the prize you stole from him as well, I’m going back to camp. Try not to send too many more rivals my way, I got better things to do than kill for you.”

—

Lûgdash is sweating. He can feel it run down his brow, pool under his neck. His hood sticks to his head, which saves him from having to adjust it while fighting, at least.

The Ranger doesn’t go down easy. He would be disappointed if he did, truly, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Even crippled and poisoned, he gives no ground and forces Lûgdash to think ahead in ways he has had no need of in a long time. Despite choosing their battlefield carefully—no barrels or fires or caragor cages in sight, far enough from his men that he won’t show his hand needlessly—he’s not stupid enough to get reckless.

He thinks for a second of his training master, a dark mystic of an Uruk with more tricks up his sleeve than teeth collected—of which he had many—and despairs for a second that most of the truly powerful Uruk have long been moved to other fronts of war. What he would give to witness a duel between the wraith and one of the elite.

Preferably he would be a witness from far away.

“Stay still,” the Ranger growls between clenched teeth, and Lûgdash smothers his urge to laugh. Frustration is a good look on him.

He ducks a swipe that aims to take his head off and pushes in, forcing the man to block, serrated edge of his sword grinding loudly against mannish steel. Both of them wince.

“Come now, Ranger,” he says, “if one of us must die today it might as well be the one who will come back.”

“Not bloody likely,” the Ranger grits out, digging his feet in and pushing back. His left arm appears to only be slightly weaker than his right, which Lûgdash idly approves of. Too many Uruk think they can get by with only one sword arm.

“Well, that’s a problem, ain’t it?” Lûgdash mutters, skittering backwards. He’d prefer to get out of this mess without having to stoop to some of his more extreme measures, nevermind what sort of consequences those would bring. There’s a reason he’s let himself bide his time in such a small camp, why he aligns himself with stronger captains instead of killing them and getting promoted. It’s not a lack of ambition.

He unlatches one of the poison bombs at his hip and weighs it idly, keeping his focus on the man in front of him. This would be a good time for Rûg to make it back from his slaughter: the other captain would love to kill the Ranger again, and it would keep Lûgdash from having to either run and lose face or die trying.

The man advances, slightly more cautiously than Lûgdash knows he normally would, and two things happen at once.

One, Lûgdash throws his bomb, not at the Ranger like he’s probably expecting, but at the ground in front of him, slicking the dirt and kicking up dust and poison vapours. Two, a nearby explosion startles both of them, causing them both to turn towards the sound. A camp—not Lûgdash’s, but one close enough that he can smell the scent of burning Uruk meat— appears to be on fire.

“What th—” Lûgdash snaps, and then things just go downhill.

—

Healing is a process Ratbag does not enjoy. It takes too long, leaves him stumbling and weak, even more so than usual. The pain is ignorable—mostly—but it leaves him with an appetite that is both all-consuming and sickly.

He can’t afford to hole up and recuperate, however. Nûrn is not a place one can afford to be idle in, and survival means being always on the move. And he still has to hide from patrols, since a lone Uruk is usually one that is shirking his duty.

He maybe gets a little reckless. Or unlucky. Depends on how he wants to view it, and he’s not sure he’s decided on that yet.

“Fucking shrahk,” he spits, leaning against the crumbling stone pillar he’s hiding behind. The flames of the screaming camp are close enough he can feel their heat, but there’s not much room to move out of the way that’s not going to risk limb and life in the battle raging in it. He’s not sure who’s attacking who, just that there’s a lot of attacking going on. And then some idiot lit a couple barrels of grog by accident, and here he is. Stuck.

He angrily tears into the stolen meat he’d been in the process of snatching when the chaos broke out, digging his teeth in with something that’s a little more intense than pure hunger. To put insult to injury, the meat isn’t even good enough to count as a last meal.

“You bloody traitor!” Someone screams from behind him, only barely audible through the roaring of the flames and fighting. Ratbag hunches down further and continues to chew.

“Me? You fukin’ shrahk bastard, you ain’t no blood brother of mine!” a voice answers, rising in pitch until it’s a screech.

“Lovers’ quarrel,” someone says to his right, and Ratbag releases his own screech as he flinches back from the shadow suddenly there, only barely stopping himself from dropping the rest of the meat into the mud.

There’s an Uruk there, swathed in hard leather and black cloth, and if he’s seeing things right, shadows that actually cling to him. Skulls dangle from the twisted metal around his throat and hips, and the sight is so strange that for a second Ratbag doesn’t really register what he’s seeing.

“Eh, what? Never seen an Assassin before?” the figure says, squatting down so that they’re eye-level with Ratbag, seemingly ignoring the full-body flinch that causes. There’s the distinct smell of brimstone and blood, only noticeable because he’s close enough he can see the yellowed eyes through the soot-covered hood.

“There’s not supposed to be any tribes out here!” Ratbag squeeks. The Terror Assassin grins, backlit by the still-raging fire and the yelling slowly being drowned out by Ratbag’s own fear.

“Aye, they like keeping us closer to the fighting. But I hear there’s some interesting game in these parts, and the brothers were just about to get killed for their idiocy, so,” the Assassin says with a rumble, grin never wavering, “one of them’s a maniac, you know. Guess the higher ups were tired of having to replace good Uruk, figured they’d sic ‘em on some of the canon fodder.”

Ratbag has a moment of insulted anger, spine snapping into some semblance of outrage, before the sight of the Assassin’s dagger flashing has him shrinking back again.

“‘Course I’m just here for some information. Nothing personal, eh?”

—

Rûg brushes off the ichor of the dead Captain and eyes his fleeing warriors. The hunter wasn’t much of a fight and he can feel the haze of bloodlust creep in, unsatiated. Usually this would be where he finds a new prey to devour, stalking the camps until a worthy opponent appears. The Ranger, often. But there is a feeling in his gut that unsettles him, that keeps him where he is. He has a sudden desire to find the small one again, in case it’s some wound that needs treating.

There is a foul wind in the air, and he’s not sure he likes it.

He toes the corpse idly, eyes the discarded supplies of the camp, and snorts. If only his brothers could see him now, rattled by a single feeling like some sort of Man.

He drags the body over to the fire pit, now just embers, and sets about rifling through its gear for anything of interest. Stale grog, a half-full bottle of poison, a cracked whetstone, some dirty and bent jewelry of Manish-make. He throws the grog in the fire, causing the coals to flare and the wood to catch again, and piles the rest aside.

None of the armour would do him any good, too small, but there’s a few pieces he admires anyways. Some carved greavers that feel newer in his hands than the rest, inlaid with caragor teeth along the sides. He pockets them even though there’s no use trying to fit them onto his own arms. A couple belts and ties that look serviceable for mending. If he was the type to bargain favours he would be tempted to take the leather skirts and pants to trade, being as they are in decent repair. Instead he cuts away the stitching and unrolls the hide until it lays flat on the ground, big enough to use as a simple wrap-bag.

Normally he would only take as much as he can comfortably carry on his own body, but something has had him stockpiling more so than usual.

He finds a few knives, most of them blunted or broken, but he takes them all anyways. A well-worn drinking horn that he weighs in his hands before discarding. Leather pouches with a variety of bones and teeth, one full of just dried plants he can’t identify. A relatively intact set of knuckle bones and dice.

He bundles it all together, sticks one of the dead Captain’s own spears through the top, and then throws the body along with the rest of the unwanted gear into the fire, causing it to spark and spit. There’s the vague thought that he’s wasting the meat, but he feels too restless to eat.

He paces the camp a few times, the blood-itch only growing, before he growls and faces towards the east again. He doesn’t deal much with his own camp, besides the occasional fights disguised as training. His second is weak enough not to try and usurp him, but just strong enough to keep the others in line, and all the minutia and supplying is easily delegated to him. He’s never been like some of the other captains, who obsessively manage their troops with the sort of possessiveness of mated caragors.

He feels the urge now. Something is whispering in his ear to go back to den, to shore up his defenses. Something is telling him to _hide_.

“Tch,” he spits, clenching his hands around the handles of his axes. Rûg the Bright-Eyes doesn’t run, doesn’t retreat, and most certainly doesn’t hide. He is a berserker, half-feral in battle, a blood-crazed monster from the pits. When death comes calling, he meets it as an old friend.

Whether it was the wounded shoulder—and the subsequent mending—that did it, or if it’s the rising tensions between the Warchiefs, he doesn’t know and doesn’t much care. What he does care about is the fact that there’s a Ranger out there—a man, strong enough to be a challenge—who won’t die. Who right this moment might be fighting one of those Warchiefs, might be taking their heads.

And here he is, fighting shrakh out of boredom.

His eyes narrow in thought. He’s never had much desire to climb the ranks outside of becoming a Captain. As long as there’s no one telling him what to do, he has no need for glory. But his teeth ache with the need to spill worthy blood, and it’s becoming apparent that that’ll come with a price.

Maybe it’s time to start looking into getting a promotion.

—

There’s a lot that makes living in Mordor difficult. Scarcity of food, clean water and easy shelter. Uruks and beasts constantly looking for prey. Scavengers eager for their own cut of meat. It makes anything more than survival...precarious at best.

Especially when half your men are being taken as slaves, have injuries that bar them from fighting, or have been scarred so much from their ordeals they can barely function as farmers and tradesmen for what small encampments you can afford to build.

But just because something isn’t easy, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.

Lithariel peers at the map her scout brought her and purses her lips. Today has been a bad one for her mother, so she’s stuck trying to decipher the Uruk’s movement on her own. Although she is not as skilled as Queen Marwen—having no second sight to consult—she has had to learn quickly these past few years.

“And how did you say this slaver died, again?” she says slowly, biting down on the ragged edge of a nail.

“Rival attack, m’lady,” the scout says promptly. “Got too close to another camp’s supplies.”

“And the men?” she asks.

“Most were able to escape. We had a few that required immediate medical attention. Four were recaptured by other camps. Five dead. And…” here the scout pauses. Lithariel lifts her head and eyes him.

“And…?”

The man furrows his brows and shuffles uncertainly.

“One of the dead was brought back by his brother, in shock. It wouldn’t be much of note, but when we can get him to talk, all he will say is ‘she’s come for us’.”

Lithariel blinks at him.

“ _She_?” she repeats. There are no female Uruk. Whether orcs even reproduce like animals is a subject of much debate. Some say they come from the earth fully formed in darkness.That the corrupted soil of Mordor creates them herself.

“Yes m’lady.”

Lithariel feels her lips pinch. It could be the ramblings of a scarred man, the mind creating things that are not real. But it could also be a sign of something new, and she’s never liked change. Any sort of ripples in Mordor’s pond usually mean new and creative ways for her men to die.

“Show me to him,” she says, rolling up the map. Better to determine the validity now, and not get caught later unaware.

“Right away!” the scout snaps to attention, turning to follow her out of the tent. The activity of the camp has been agitated visibly by the Slaver’s death; there’s an influx of people running to and fro, trying to accommodate the newcomers. Some are celebrating, but it’s muted. There’s too much to do to go overboard with the feasting and drinking.

“This way,” the scout points, waving towards the healing tent rest a little ways from her own. She nods to those who stop and salute, lets their pace be unhurried in the tense atmosphere, tries to calm her people through sheer presence alone. It doesn’t take long for the to arrive, however, and there’s not much her presence can do in a place where misery clings so deeply. A tired healer meets them at the entrance.

“We lost another one,” he says, waving them on in, “to fever this morning.”

The inside is cramped and hot with too many bodies in too small a space. She wishes they had the resources to expand the healing tent, but as it is, even the temporary tents are a risk she can ill afford when it comes to bringing attention to their camp.

“I hear you have a battle-touched patient with some strange information,” she says, eyes raking over the groaning and feverish men on the ground. She can’t pin-point her quarry just by looking, however, since they all sport the garb and faces of the newly-freed.

“Over here,” the healer nods, guiding her further in. The scout stands guard over the entrance, which is a good thing considering the lack of room.

The man she’s shown is thin with hunger, pale and bruised with the hurts of captivity. His eyes are lined with deep rings and wrinkles. He looks like any other of those they’ve freed. The only thing she can see to differentiate him is a slowly bleeding cut across his jaw and lip that the healer hasn’t mended yet.

The man doesn’t turn to look at her, doesn’t seem to notice she’s there at all, just keeps his hands clenched tight at his lap and his head bowed. Lithariel pauses and shares a look with the healer.

“Your name, stranger,” she says finally when the silence gets too long. The man twitches, but his head doesn’t move more than an inch up.

“...”

She has to lean forward to hear his words, as mumbled and slurred as they are.

“...Dirn Vargis,” he repeats, “brother of Jairl Vargis.”

She does not recognise the names, not that she truly thought she would. Very few slaves keep even their family names, nevermind their first. It is hard to tell who is kin in Mordor, outside of the larger freedman-clans. The brother must have been the body he brought back. It would have been buried already, but she wishes she had known to visit it, if only so that she might look for clues there too.

“Dirn, I welcome you to our camp. You are free now.” She means to comfort him, but it does no good. The man hunches down, a full body twitch that starts in the shoulders and travels down, fingers jerking in their hold. He’s shaking a little, she notices.

Lithariel shares a look with the healer, who only shakes his head.

“I would not press when the grief is so fresh, but you might have information that could help more of our kind escape. Can you tell me who gave you that wound?” she pushes, kneeling so she can just see the pinch in his face.

“She came for us,” he says, slowly, ponderously. “I knew she would, the wildchild. I warned him about her, but he did not believe. She came to take her bones back.”

“Bones?” she asks, and it is the healer who answers her this time.

“The corpse was missing a hand and a few fingers. The fingers looked to be bitten off.”

“A finger for every slight,” the man agrees, “and one for ‘a blood gift.’ ”

Lithariel leans back. The words pull at her memory, turn her mind to some of the stories her Queen Marwen used to tell her as a child. But for the life of her she can’t remember exactly what they entailed.

“A woman did this to your brother?” she asks instead. If what the healer says is true, that means there’s someone out there with the viciousness in them to use their own teeth to maim.

The man finally raises his head. His eyes are like used flint, hard and tired.

“There is no beast more dangerous than that which considers itself alone. My brother insured she had no recourse, and whether or not I wished it, she claimed her price in blood.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and here we are again

She doesn’t know what to do now that her revenge is done with. There are no more ghosts haunting her dreams at night, no whispers in the shadows telling her to claim her blood back.

There are Uruk, of course, a thousand lives she would feel good snuffing out. The stench of Mordor doesn’t disappear just because her sister’s killer is dead. It gives her more time, though. There’s less of that shuddering feeling in her chest, a constant reminder that moves her on. She can rest, a little.

Maybe it’s because of that that she starts really listening to the voices on the wind. Not just from the slaves she rescues when she crosses their path, but the orcs too. Talk is plentiful, and although she’s always kept an ear out—so she could keep track of the coward’s location and protect herself from the hunters—she’s never really paid more attention than needed.

But now—

“They say he’s immortal,” a grunt says in a low voice, smart enough to know not to disturb the captain dozing by the fire. His neighbour grunts and continues to repair the leather greaves in his lap.

The wraith is a favourite subject of talk, she’s found. Usually she doesn’t bother listening too deeply to the gossip—she has no interest in a man half-dead. She doesn’t have anything else to do, however, and if she wants to stay unnoticed in her perch she can’t move. She’s tucked away in the arch of one of the many crumbling pillars, close enough that she’s safe from any roaming bands of slave-catchers and just far enough that she doesn’t have to breathe in the stench of the camp. So she stays, and listens.

“Ya can kill him, if ya’re good enough,” one of them mutters. “Like Rûg the Bright-Eyes.”

“Ya, but he always comes back,” the first one interrupts. There’s something about his tone of voice that sounds almost excited by the thought.

“Elf magic,” one of them spits, and a few grunts and groans go around the fire before they quickly hush themselves. Takra’s fingers twitch on his spear, but she doesn’t think he wakes at the noise. It’s hard to tell, of course. She’s pretty sure the captain spends his waking hours half-asleep anyways.

“Did’ja hear of that one captain he ganked for mentioning the Black Gate? Like, bam, from at least thirty paces away, arrow to the eye.”

“Pah, killing a soft-headed fool don’t mean nothing. That kill on the beastmaster with his own caragor, now…”

The voices continue for a while, and she idly gathers the words up with slight curiousity. The Wraith is more than known to her, of course, vaguely. He’s killed more than a few of her targets, slavers and taskmasters alike, but she usually doesn’t pay any heed to his exploits outside of what they mean for her. If he has half the amount of power the Uruk say he does, she’s surprised he hasn’t taken over Mordor by now.

“Tch, it’s not the Ranger you have to worry about,” one voice pipes up, and she slides her eyes through the gloom until she sees the speaker. A hunter. Just come from the hunt, by the looks of it, with still-wet blood on his armour and a tired look about him.

Takra sits up, dislodging the lassitude of sleep with the ease of the well-practiced.

“You got eyes on them, then?” he asks, settling himself into the posture of a captain receiving a report, even as his Uruk shuffle back and away.

“Yes, boss,” the hunter says, leaning forward. “Three captains and their forces not far behind. Terror, Marauder, and Feral. They’ve been pressing shrakh into service over by the eastern ridge.”

 

—

Dying hurts. There’s nothing quite like it, not an injury or torture that really compares to that moment when your brain starts to understand that that’s it, it’s done. When the heart beats one last time and you can feel your whole body try desperately to start it again.

Doesn’t matter if it’s a cut throat, a caragor bite, a captain’s blade—doesn’t matter if it’s from tripping over the wet earth and impaling yourself on a poisoned sword.

The Uruk captain’s face is one of surprise that slowly melts into abject horror. Talion can feel his own horror mount as well, although it has more to do with pride than the wound itself. Of all the idiotic ways to die in Mordor—

 

The explosions happening in the distance seem to be a perfect counterpoint to the popping he can hear in his head. Pop pop, blood bursting. A single moment of inattention, of surprise at the chaos that for once is not of his own making, and—

If this was a true death, he’d rather there would be no witnesses, but the yellowed eyes staring at him give little hope of the shame staying in its grave—

A trainees mistake, he thinks to himself, to think that a moment of inattention on his enemy’s side would mean a lack of defence. The poison under-foot was slick and corrosive, his arm shaking from the paralytic—he’d had no real reason to think lunging forward would work as an attack. Or, that is, the attempt to dodge the retaliation he’d been greeted with.

It is not easy to fall onto a sword. Usually it takes dedication, or at least intent. Takes more than a wide-eyed Uruk, an unbalanced body wracked with poison, and a little bad luck. He can feel Celebrimbor draw near, his own palpable surprise adding to Talion’s own.

“The fuck, ranger,” Lûgdash spits, jerking his blade out of Talion’s gut. Talion would answer, except he can’t, blood bubbling up his throat and frothing at his lips. He coughs, presses his hand against the wound in his gut, stumbles back.

The Uruk waves his hands, blade a sickly green that’s now mixed with rust red, turning the colour of mud.

“No, really. The fuck. Shrahk, I didn’t plan that,” he continues, words rushing down like the blood now seeping through Talion’s fingers. There’s something a little frantic in the Uruk’s tone, something a little desperate, that cuts through the fog taking over Talion’s mind. He’s distantly surprised that there’s no gloating—but considering the underhanded nature of who he’s fighting, maybe it stings the Uruk’s pride to win by chance.

Talion falls to one knee, breath catching on another wet gasp. Distantly he can hear the pounding of feet and shouts of the captain’s Uruk, roused by the sound of the roaring flames not that far away. He can make out a few shouts of alarm from those observant enough to notice their Captain and his downed prey.

“Tch,” Lûgdash spits, ducking down to eye him. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth, it seems. I had a plan, you shrahk. Do you realise what they’re gonna do now that I’ve finally killed ya? There’s a reason I have my enemies killed by _others_. I’m an assassin, not a brawler.”

That makes no sense, Talion wants to say, but his vision is blurring and darkness is edging in. As far as he knows, all Uruk want to kill him because it will let them rise through the ranks. A captain—especially one small enough that he’s never seen out on missions or in the proving grounds—should be chomping at the bit to tear him to shreds.

“Talion,” Celebrimbor whispers, ghostly hands landing on his shoulders. Maybe he’s trying to lend strength, so that they might escape somewhat alive before the horde arrives and they are torn to actual bits. Talion can’t feel it, however, and soon he can’t hear whatever words are waiting behind the elf’s bared teeth. The rushing in his ears rises in pitch, blocking everything out. This close to death he can only feel the coarse dirt under his hand, the ends of his fingers turning numb and cold.

The last thing he sees is the Uruk reaching down, scarred hands picking up his sword as it finally drops from his lax grip.

—

Power is important in Mordor. The weak are punished—greedily, with sadistic joy in the hearts of those doing the punishing, even by the land and beasts and flora itself—and the Uruk especially are in constant flux as they fight and fuck and beg for power.

Lûgdash is no different, really. He wants, with a desire strong enough to be poisonous, to not have to beg for scraps, to have the fear and respect of his enemies. To live without panic clawing at his throat. The weak die in Mordor. Worse, the weak are pressed into slavery and tortured at the hands of those barely stronger.

Lûgdash craves power like all those touched by Mordor’s darkness. But he is Clever, you see, and so where his brethren will scramble in the muck and die in duels and proclaim their strength for all to see, he stalks the shadows and gathers his power carefully. Captaincy, to start, and then a slow and methodical recruitment of Uruk that stays small enough to not draw notice, but that holds the best hunters and fighters and more importantly the _cleverest_ of Uruk. A weeding of those that would oppose them if they knew enough to do so—the ones in the way of his _personal_ goals. The Quartermaster and his supply-pinching hands, the captains encroaching upon his territory, the slavers eyeing his weakest links—

Lûgdash has a long memory, and the mind to make revenge something worth savouring. Those that had been created in his own batch—those who would have been his brothers if he were human—have all died from their own hubris.

To aim for Warchief is foolhardy in his opinion. Too many Uruk wanting to kill you, too much visibility, too little control over your so-called fiefdoms. It’s a messy job with no actual power besides the pitiful allowances granted by the Nazgûl and the Dark Lord. He’s always made sure to toe the line of power so that he doesn’t cross the line and end up on a throne of lies.

But even the most well-crafted plans crumble when faced with outside forces, and sometimes there’s nothing he can do to change that.

He’s re-coating his blade methodically with poison near the fire’s edge, ignoring the chattering of his Uruk, and furiously thinking it over. He cannot run from a Warchief assignment, and the only way to be displaced is by death. And he cannot refuse—to do so would paint a target bigger than Sauron’s eye on his back. Not to mention it wouldn’t be accepted anyways. Uruk are as much slaves as the humans in the pen.

The only one he knows of who’s successfully evaded warchiefdom is—

Lûgdash pauses, feels the murderous intent at his back and his Uruks’ sudden silence, and stifles the urge to hide. It would do no good, after all, since he’s seen first hand the sort of bloodyminded persistence that Rûg is best at.

“If you’re here to kill me you should know that my flesh is poisonous—side effect of my blade,” he says with a tone approaching wry. If they need to fight, he will, but he’s not all too confident with his chances. They’ve never gone head to head yet, but Lûgdash is aware of his own weaknesses, and in an upfront battle he knows who would come out dead.

Rûg looms over him, but doesn’t unlatch his axes yet. The other Uruk is dusted from the road, dried flecks of blood in the grooves of his hands, muscles vibrating with the usual pent-up aggression. Lûgdash forces himself to look at his face.

“Not interested in your flesh,” the berserker says, and Lûgdash feels his eye-ridge rise. As long as he’s known him, Rûg has had an appetite almost as large as his bloodlust. And he’s shown that tenfold to those who steal his kill—like Lûgash has now done with the Ranger. Rûg is _possesive_. Obsessed almost. Doesn’t matter that the man isn’t dead for real, Rûg wants to be the only one with the delight of watching the non-life fade from the wraith’s eyes.

Rûg rakes his gaze down Lûgdash’s body, lingering on the sharp jut of his bones, and slowly meets his eyes. His expression is still murderous, but something almost contemplative enters his stare.

“Yer too skinny. No fat to sizzle anywhere on ya. You’d make a snack at best.”

Lûgdash chokes and resists the urge to cover himself. He’s small, for sure, when compared to the giant bulk of Rûg, but he’s never been called a _snack_ before. He’s strangely insulted.

He stands up, forcing Rûg to back up at least a tad lest he wants to get scratched with the blade still in his grip, and turns to his Uruk.

“Oy! Back to work, or I’ll feed you to our picky eater here,” he snaps, watching them scramble back into some semblance of usefulness. They’re mostly used to this odd partnership Rûg and him have, enough to know he’s being serious. It probably helps that there’s a veritable miasma surrounding the courtyard now. Bloodlust only barely restrained. He can feel the heat at his back of a banked fire ready to burst into flame.

“You’re angry, I take it?” he says in an undertone. Rûg doesn’t even have to move for Lûgdash to feel the threat in his stance.

“I should kill you.” His voice is deep, with a rumbling that sounds like a caragor’s growl. Now more than ever Lûgdash is aware of just how sharp his teeth are. “The Ranger is _mine_.”

Lûgdash readjusts his sword grip and takes a careful step to the left. Not a retreat, no, just giving himself a little more room to fight if he needs to. Rûg turns with him, not letting him get a better angle. A hand snaps out and clamps down on his wrist, hard enough to bruise. Lûgdash just stops himself from stabbing a dagger into the offending hand—any movement to defend himself at this point would just end up with an axe in his skull.

“I thought that might be the case,” Lûgdash says, making sure to keep his tone even, “and so I figured I would get you something to convince you otherwise.”

Lûgdash reaches down, making sure to go slow and non-threateningly, and pulls up the sword lain discarded beside the fire. It means sheathing his own sword, but he’s less worried about that motion than he is about lowering his head. Rûg’s eyes track him the whole way, and when they flick towards the man-made steel, Lûgdash can feel his interest sharpen.

“The Ranger’s blade,” he says, holding it out. The edge is sharp enough that it glitters in the fire light, reflecting into the equally luminescent eyes of the Bright-Eyes. There’s a pause, and then Rûg’s hand releases him, transferring that hard grip to the proffered sword.

“He will come for this,” he says, and Lûgdash nods. He’d had to think quickly when he realised that the Ranger was actually going to die on his blade—knowing that to come back without some sort of bargaining tool would mean practically laying down under Rûg’s axes.

“There’s no better way to find him, really. He won’t rest until he gets his weapon back.” The man had already shown a disproportionate sentimental streak.

Rûg grunts, but it’s not quite agreement. Not yet. He eyes Lûgdash for a few more seconds, thumb idly running through the grooves of the sword’s leather grip, before grinning.

“Better idea,” he says, withdrawing a little. His free hand goes to his belt and frees something that’s been tucked into a loop, chucking it at him and forcing him to catch or have it hit his face.

Lûgdash blinks in confusion as he looks at the bone and leather braces. They’re well-made, and look to be in his size with little adjustment. He’s even more confused as Rûg then flips the Ranger’s sword around so the grip is facing outwards in his direction.

“Keep the sword. I have no use for it, and it ain’t my trophy,” Rûg grunts, the points of his teeth glinting in the firelight. “Haven’t used a sword since training, anyhow.”

“But the Ranger…” Lûgdash blinks. Cocks his head a little as if the change in view will bring about some insight. Rûg’s grin only becomes more unsettling.

“Hear you’ll be needing a bodyguard now that you’ve made Warchief. I stick with you, the Ranger will come anyways.”

Lûgdash pauses, feels the truth in the words and has to choke down the fear that rises suddenly and without warning. By all rights he should be ecstatic about the idea of such a strong bodyguard. Except he knows that this isn’t the first time Rûg’s been a bodyguard. All the previous warchiefs he’s worked under are dead, and although there’s never been any proof—

And the Ranger too. He’s not forgotten about that.

Rûg leans in a little.

“Trust me, ‘O Clever one, you’ll want to stick around for what’s coming.”

—

The existence of orc-slaves is every Uruk’s fear—in that it is a constant reminder that if you don’t fight as viciously as the next, if you aren’t as strong or as bloodthirsty, you’ll become just as useful as a pinkskin in the dirt. The branding is something that happens to traitors, to weaklings, to those who get in the way of their betters.

To be honest, it’s always been a surprise to Ratbag that he hasn’t been branded before. His alliance with the Ranger saved him from the fate near the end, but even before they met he had gotten close. Too many fights laying in the dirt, too many insults made to those with stronger grips, too many times he’d turn tail and run instead of stayed to die.

He’s made an art out of being free in a world where he should be in chains, but his luck was bound to run out sometime.

“Hey! Watch it!” he yelps as he’s shoved into the pen. His captor just grins a bloody smile at him and slams the gate down, already walking away.

Ratbag wipes at his face, the blood from the “questioning” and the subsequent branding only just starting to slow. His ribs are aching again—not that they ever stopped, if he’s honest—and he’s not looking forward to being penned in like an animal with a bunch of other Uruk who are all bitter and larger than him. Uruk slaves are always happy to find other slaves weaker than them to push around.

He takes a peak under his hand as he scrubs at the scabs on his forehead, and is only slightly relieved to see there’s only one other slave in the cage. Only slightly, because it happens to be the biggest fucking Olog he’s ever seen. That happens to be growling at him.

Well great.

—

Talion wakes up on cold stone of the tower and groans. He can feel the phantom pain of poison still in his veins, and the slightly less phantom touch of Celebrimbor near his back.

“That was ill advised,” the elf says as soon as his lashes start fluttering, and Talion swats at the shadow behind him with a grumble. They’ve died more times than he can count now, and Celebrimbor always makes it seem like it’s purely Talion’s fault. It’s not like the wraith can even feel pain anymore.

“I’d like to see you try to fight someone that slippery—literally,” he says, sitting up wincingly. There’s a judgemental silence from behind him.

Talion knuckles at his eyes for a few seconds, just breathing and letting his body get used to the feeling again, before sighing.

“A weird one too, did you notice how he seemed almost disappointed in killing me? I’ve never met an Uruk less willing to gloat—” here he pauses, as a niggling feeling in his brain makes itself known. He pats his sides and the ground around him.

“Celebrimbor, where’s my sword?”

There’s silence from the elf, and Talion stands up hurriedly to examine the surroundings of the tower. It’s as barren as it normally is, the only thing around the lightly-glowing form form of the Haedir itself.

“...That slimy bastard, he took it,” he says slowly, memory coming back to him. He’d seen the captain pick up his sword before passing out, but he’s not used to Uruk smart enough to actually disarm him before death. Otherwise the weapon is transported with his body, even if it is separated from it.

“You will have to reclaim it,” Celebrimbor notes idly, and Talion waves him away, peering over the edge. There’s only a few milling Uruk some ways away, and a scouting troop over by the north. He’s near to one of the western fortresses, which means the camp he died in should be in the other direction. If he can find a caragor he should be able to get there without trouble even without his main weapon.

He has his bow and dagger anyways, worst comes to worst. Although…

He examines the Uruk down by the base of the tower again and hums. There’s one defender and the rest are just regular soldiers; all easy enough to dispatch. It will feel wrong to fight with an orcish blade, and there’s nothing more dangerous than an ill-suited weapon when trying to overcome a stronger opponent, but it is better than nothing.

He grips the edge of the tower and counts his breaths until he sees the defender turn, back vulnerable and aimed his way. His son’s broken sword slips into his hands easily, and with the weight of Celebrimbor at his back, he jumps.

—

Mad Dog is being hunted. It is a strange feeling—one she is used to being on the other end of, at least when it comes to other humans. Uruk are always hunting her, but it never feels personal, not like this does. She should have know letting the brother live would come back to haunt her.

At least she has a decent buffer from getting caught unawares in Takra. The captain is surprisingly perceptive, and he’s already cut off two scouts by simply moving camp to an area with a sheer cliff face on one side and a deep brackish river on the other as a buffer from prying eyes. And he’s kept his group from messing with her, not that she’s needed it really. Bite off enough fingers and even Uruk will leave you alone.

She hauls the bucket out of the river and pulls it onto the muddy bank. Her pant legs are rolled up to her knees and her shift is knotted at her side, but she’s still sopping wet from having to go out far enough for the water to clear a little. She’ll have to boil it anyways, but at least this time hopefully she’ll be able to use the run-off for some cleaning.

Eyes watch her as she squeezes the water out of her clothing, but it is not appreciative in nature. Uruk don’t seem to care about bodies in the same way as men do—oh, they make sexual jokes and seem to be in a perpetual cloud of lust when it comes to violence, but the simple act of being half-clothed does nothing for them. And she has yet to meet one that’s looked at a woman differently than a man.

That’s how she knows she is being hunted. There are the eyes of the Uruk camp on her—Takra with idle interest in her craft, the grunts in slight fear at her teeth—but there is also the feeling of eyes watching water run down her legs and her shift cling to her narrow sides.

She eyes the darkness of the brush and almost misses the glint of metal through the leaves.

“Tch,” she grunts, lifting the bucket to one shoulder while grabbing her newly-made overcoat in the other hand. She has herbs to grind and tincture to make, not to mention having to start on a new bone-brush for her quickly growing hair. And now that her and the camp have made a tentative peace, she’s not going to let the stench last for long, so there is plenty of supplies to be made.

She does not have time for men with lust in their eyes. She’ll find them later and show them why such a thing is a bad idea—for them.

—

Lithariel crouches down even further in the bush and curses. She did not expect an actual woman—did not expect a human, if she was honest. But the reports were clear, and worse, they were accurate.

Somehow though, they did not mention how _attractive_ the madwoman was.


	6. Chapter 6

Lûgdash takes over the old warchief’s stronghold—the one the Ranger killed not that long ago. It’s stood empty for a while as different factions warred for control, and he’s not the only one surprised that he came out on top in the end of everything. Not that it was really his own doing—killing the Ranger has become the new method in which Uruk are promoted.

But it means there’s a lot to do. Not just watching his back for some ambitious rival or traitorous subordinate, but clearing out the old chief’s possessions, fixing up the fort so it’s defensible, moving all his men and supplies, and going through the long and arduous task of making things actually liveable.

There’s grog to make and caragors to train, and to make it worse, he has to do it with Rûg following only a step behind. He can feel the heat of the larger Uruk at his back when he’s in meeting with his lieutenants, when he’s overseeing the training, when he goes to recruit more Uruk to deal with the broken towers and missing wells.

It wears on his nerves, if he’s honest. And it doesn’t stop at the duties he has to take on to improve the fort—Rûg takes to following him everywhere, just in case the Ranger shows up.

“The Uruk are going to talk,” he mutters, as Rûg follows him into the warchief rooms. It's been stripped of anything the old chief touched, turned into bare stone and wood. Lûgdash has only had time to get his weapons brought up, and one of his cleverer lieutenants was smart enough to find some sort of desk he can work at. There’s no bed, however. There’s barely enough fur for one Uruk, nevermind two.

Rûg doesn’t answer, not that Lûgdash really expected him to. He groans and goes over to the desk, unbuckling the Ranger’s sword as he does. The sword gets placed on the desk, and Lûgdash stands there for a moment, just staring at it.

“Fuck,” he eventually mutters, collapsing on the crate he’s using as a chair. Rûg doesn’t seem to be paying any attention and heads to the only window in the room, peering out as if it’s possible to see the Ranger coming through the smoke and fog of the fort.

Lûgdash shuffles the reports and supply lists on the wood serving as his desk and ignores him. The fort doesn’t have running water—which isn’t surprising, none of the camps do—but that means with the hundreds of Uruk that will soon be moving in, there’s going to be an excess in filth and disease soon. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue. He doesn’t think any of the other warchiefs are concerned about a few weak links dying from disease. But Lûgdash isn’t interested in being like the other warchiefs.

And—although he’s not going to tell anyone this—he has a more delicate stomach than most and the stench has been putting him off his meat. He can handle rot, he can handle caragor shrahk. He can handle the smell of chemicals and poisons. What he can’t handle is the smell of bile and fever-sweat as Uruk are cooked within.

So he’s distracted pondering how to transport enough fresh water to keep the stench down—a series of relay points, maybe, or some sort of tunnel dug to the nearby lake—when the knock at his door has both of them reaching for their weapons.

Lûgdash’s hands find the Ranger’s sword without thought.

“Boss? Messenger for ‘ye”, says a voice behind the wood. It sounds like one of his lieutenants, but Lûgdash doesn’t relax quite yet. It’s easy enough to turn even loyal Uruk if you know how.

Rûg moves in and opens the door, no doubt hoping to see the Ranger behind the door, but it only reveals the somewhat nervous face of one of Lûgdash’s hunters. There’s a figure behind him that steps out, clad in the feathered armour of a Mystic scout.

“Greetings, warchief. I come with gifts from my master.”

—

Ratbag doesn't know Black Speech. Well, it’s more accurate to say there’s about a hundred different dialects of Black Speech out there, a hundred more dialects of Orcish, and the Uruk army has defaulted back to Common out of self defense a few years ago.

He’s never had a head for languages, so it’s not surprising that the only one he can really use is the one that he needs to survive.

That doesn’t mean he can’t tell when someone is trying to cuss him out in it.

“Whoa—whoah there,” he yelps, dodging out of the way of two giant fists. The Olog doesn’t even pause at his words—who knows, if he’s not speaking Common maybe he can’t understand it.

“C’mon,” he tries again, ducking under legs as large as tree trunks. There’s not much room in the cage, and he keeps getting distracted by the jeering of the other slaves in neighbouring pens.

“Can’t we talk—,” his lungs burn with every dodge, and his stamina is not what it used to be, “—about this?”

No reply but more guttural curses, and Ratbag uses the time between the Olog turning and trying to literally stomp on him to pull something out from under his slave wrap. It took a lot of distraction to get it, and he’s not looking forward to dying after the effort it took. He’d had to let the gross slavemaster with the crooked teeth a little too close for comfort.

“Look, don’t go killing me yet, right? Not when I can get us outta here.” He jangles the large keys to both their chains around one finger.

The Olog pauses, and Ratbag can almost here the derision in whatever his response is. Maybe about how it would be easier to kill Ratbag now and just take the keys from him, which, fair.

“Look, you don’t look like you’re from around here, yeah? I’ve had to hide in these caves for months now, I can get us out with less fighting. Not that it doesn’t look like you can’t fight! You definitely look like you can. But you’ve got an injured leg right? Better safe than sorry.”

The Olog pauses, giving him the stink eye. Around them the other slaves quiet down, no doubt disappointed at what looks to be a cease in the fighting. Ratbag doesn’t turn around to gesture rudely at them, although he wants to.

“I know where the grog is kept,” he pleads, waving the keys.

There’s silence for a few seconds before the Olog huffs, lifting his arms so Ratbag can get at the large metal locks holding his hands together. Which he does quickly, because it’s unlikely the taskmaster will be idiotic enough not to notice his keys missing for very long.

“Great! You can be the brawn, and I’ll be the brain, and together we’ll be great partners! Now I just hafta figure out what to call you…”

—

“What’s this?” Takra asks with a grunt, watching the slave girl mix something in a giant pot he’s not sure he remembers the camp ever having.

“Hygiene,” the girl responds, not even bothering to look his way. A few of the milling Uruk—some peering over each other’s shoulders attempting to get a look, but tellingly staying well out of range of her teeth—mutter to themselves at her answer. He’s pretty sure they don’t know what it means.

“Yeah? What for?” He leans his head on the butt of his spear, eyes already falling half-shut. The girl is silent for a little while, but Takra doesn’t bother prompting her again. He doesn’t care that much, and trying to get the girl to talk is as exhausting as pulling teeth sometimes.

“Uruk are disgusting,” she says finally. Takra has to hum in agreement to that. Uruk are made to be disgusting—it’s in their very being. Most take pride in their rot and filth. They were made to be a direct opposite to elves, after all, and so they are born disgusting and only get more so as they age.

“Uruk are disgusting and I refuse to have to smell it anymore,” she snaps, and he opens his eyes as he feels something thrust in his face.

“...what’s this?” He asks slowly, eyeing the cup. It looks a little like unsettled lard, but smells like the herbs she always seems to be collecting.

“Soap,” the girl says, her tone of voice wry, as if she already knows he doesn’t know what that is.

He takes a sniff and feels his face do something strange.

“Do you eat it?” some brave Uruk from the crowd asks, peering further in. The girl—Mad Dog, as some of the camp has taken to calling her—snarls in his face, causing a few others to laugh.

“Not this kind,” she says with a glare, angling the cup out of reach, “and it needs to harden anyways.”

Takra still feels his face stuck in some sort of weird cramp. It certainly smells edible. In fact, he thinks if he were to put it on one of the minions it would work as a decent caragor bait. But there’s something else under all of that he’s not sure he recognises. He would think, considering the humans’ obsession with all things flowery and beautiful, that the girl would have scented it with something a little sweeter if she really wanted to get rid of Uruk stench. But whatever is in the cup is subtler than that, almost smokey.

It actually smells really good.

“What’s in it?” he asks slowly, shifting a little so his spear plants itself more firmly in the dirt.

“Animal fat—well, usually it would be animal fat, but I just used the remnants from whatever meat was left over, so it’s probably caragor and orc. Chalk, some ground up bits of the acid rocks by the river, and herbs, mostly the tall grass from the bank. It’s probably going to be a little lumpier than it should be.”

Well that explains it.

Another brave soul attempts to lean in again to take a sniff of the pot and gets stabbed for his trouble. Takra just shakes his head and heads to the fire, beckoning one of his lieutenants as he does to join him. They have a raid in the morning, and as much as he’d rather take a nap, it means less work for him if he can get the plan hammered into the head of someone who will actually remember it.

The slave girl’s surprising skill with chemistry can be addressed later, if at all.

Actually…

“Girl,” he says, turning back around. She pauses in her attempts to fend off curious Uruk noses and raises an eyebrow his way. “How long will that stay liquid?”

“A day or two, depending on how the fat settles. Why?” Her lips purse, and he can almost smell the suspicion coming off of her.

“How easy would it be to coat things with?” he asks, tapping his nails against the wood of his spear.

“...depends on the thing, I guess. _Why_?”

Takra hums again and thinks about it. The captain they’re killing tomorrow is a beastmaster with a troublesome amount of caragors. If whatever she’s making smells as good as he thinks it will to the beasts’ noses, they might be able to get rid of them without risking the Uruk noticing the smell of actual caragor bait.

“How you feel about spilling some Uruk blood tomorrow?”

The girl straightens, a grin slowly making its way onto her face. Even at her small height he feels like she’s looking at him eye to eye.

“Do you have to _ask_?”

—

Lithariel hasn’t had much desire to observe orcs. Hasn’t had much time to do so, either, if she’s honest. There’s not much to observe when you’re fighting for your life.

Still, she feels like this is probably somewhat out of the normal for the beasts, even the ones she’s seen come under the heel of Talion. The inclusion of a human female into the camp was surprising enough, the reactions of the orcs to her are downright chilling. This isn’t something supernatural in origin, or whatever it is that Talion does. The girl isn’t in control.

But she’s not out of control either. The orcs don’t touch her, and while some of it seems to be disinterest—these are well-fed and well-disciplined, for orcs—some of it is fear. She doesn’t have to doubt as to the viciousness of the woman anymore. The second day she spends watching them one of the orcs gets too close and almost loses a hand. From her _teeth_.

But that’s not all. Although she hesitates to categorise it—since such a thing would suggest orcs having the emotional intelligence to develop bonds—there seems to be some sort of connection between the woman and the orc captain. He’s the one she interacts with the most, and the others look to him for clues on what to do with her.

It’s obvious that they are just as confused as to her presence as Lithariel is.

She eyes the group as they slink towards another camp, hidden in the ruins of a nearby tower. A few of the orcs are carrying small bundles, ones that she saw the woman make late last night. She’s not sure what they’re for, although she saw what the woman was putting in them. It doesn’t make much sense, if she’s honest.

The captain lifts a hand and the group halts, those with bundles crouching down and wrapping what look to be long stips of cloth around some arrows. Then a small round bag is attached to the arrow tip, so it almost looks like they’re training arrows meant to be padded.

The group then advances again, with the archers spreading out to find vantage points. Up top, Lithariel has a birds view of the soon-to-be battlefield and has to wonder at what their plan is. This base might not be the biggest, but there’s certainly more orcs than the small raiding party. Not to mention the caragors.

One of the archers finds a ledge to perch from and nocks the padded arrow, aiming for the cages. Lithariel bites her lip and frowns. It doesn’t look like something that would do any damage—but maybe that’s the point.

The arrow flies, making no sound as it sails between the bars of the caragor cage. The beast’s ears perk, and it goes to pace along the bars agitatedly, but otherwise doesn’t seem to notice. Maybe because the arrow lands with very little sound, about a foot away, near the back of the cage. The bag at the arrow tip bursts on contact, spilling what at this distance Lithariel thinks might be some sort of white paint.

There’s a second of pause as the animal’s ears go completely back, head lifting to smell the air. It turns, spots the arrow, and instead of getting more agitated, as Lithariel knows they are trained to do at any sign of attack, it—purrs?

The beast goes to lick the paint and rub its head all along the gravel near the arrow, breaking the shaft as it does so and just smearing more of whatever white substance that is all along its snout.

More arrows fly, landing similarly in any cage with a caragor occupying it. Soon all the animals are drowsily rolling around their cages, seemingly paying no mind to the outside world.

Lithariel leans back and frowns. Some sort of drug?

The group moves closer, with a few of the archers switching out the trick arrows for regular ones. She can’t tell what the plan is now, because the caged animals might be out of the fight but there are still the guards on the back of the awake caragors, not to mention the plain soldier orcs scattered about.

It’s apparent that’s not a worry for the captain though, he simply picks up his spear and heads into the camp with a slow, meandering gait. The archers with regular arrows all aim for the guards, the ones with padded arrows aiming for the caragors, and the rest of the orcs follow their captain.

Lithariel peers down closer, biting at her nails, and wishes she had thought to bring a notebook of some kind. There’s bound to be good information for the resistance here, if only she had the time to write it down.

The attack starts with a few guards going down with arrows in their neck. Some of them miss and there’s shouting as the camp suddenly wakes up to the face that there’s an attack already in progress. From there she loses track of the battle.

At some point the captains meet in the middle of the cleared-out camp, one on a snarling beast of a caragor, and the other with a shield taller than he is. Considering how tall the defender is, that means the shield itself must be seven feet at least.

The rest of the battle dies down a little as both sides of the attack pause to watch their captains fight. A sort of gladiatorial arena is set up, orcs slowly filling in the edges of the fight as spectators. Lithariel leans back and sighs. What's the point of making it a raid if they’re just going to resort to one-on-one combat in the end?

Well mostly one-on-one, there’s still a few in the audience who are taking opportunistic stabs.

When it looks like the fight is going to take a while—the defender is just letting the caragor break its teeth on his shield—she leans back and rubs at her face. She needs to get back to camp. There’s only so much time she can take off to investigate strange happenings before the guilt of not being there for her people gets to her. But she feels like eyes need to be kept on this situation, and she’s not sure who to turn to to do so.

Her scouts are needed in other areas, and she doesn’t want to risk her men this close to some of the slaver camps.

Maybe it’s time she asked Talion for another favour.

—

Talion has an orc blade in one hand and a heachache pounding behind his eyes when he finally tracks his sword back to a fortress that looks to be in the middle of repairs. He vaguely remembers killing the previous warchief, but it looks nothing like what he remembers from before.

There’s hunters scattered everywhere, but also a large amount of what appear to just be labourers under the careful watch of Uruk with paper and scrolls, pointing groups to shore up walls and dig out trenches. Large metal spikes are being fashioned to the walls and doors to stop anyone from climbing them, and he can see metal caragor cages being brought into the courtyard by the dozens.

“Well, they’ve certainly not wasted any time,” he mutters to Celebrimbor, adjusting his grip on the nearby tower. He doesn’t see the captain out in the open—not that he would expect to, really, but he makes note of it anyway—but he does notice a large uptick in Uruk forces from the previous camp. No doubt recruits brought in to beef up defenses now that the captain is a warchief.

“Look,” Celebrimbor points, ghostly hand aimed at a cluster of Uruk idling around one of the large fires. They’re painted with strange symbols and designs, and look quite out of place next to the armoured and covered of the warchief’s hunters and scouts.

Talion peers closer.

“Are those from that one Uruk captain’s camp? The bright one?”

“Rûg Bright-Eyes, yes. The one that keeps killing you,” Celebrimbor says, somewhat dryly. Talion winces. The Bright-Eyes is, if Talion had to rate the Uruk he’s fought so far, his worst nemesis. Stealth does little against him, somehow having an awareness to rival his size, and so far Talion hasn’t found any sign of major weakness. Not fire, not flies, not poison. And he’s extremely hard to defend against, since his attacks tend to be extremely fast and hard-hitting.

“What are they doing here?” he wonders, jumping down to inch closer. If he finds an Uruk in camp that looks important enough, he might be able to dominate him to get some answers. One of the overseers maybe.

“Could have turned traitor to follow a more powerful leader, although I do not anticipate they are to live very long if that is the case. Rûg Bright-Eyes did not seem like the type to let a slight go unavenged,” Celebrimbor muses before fading back into Talion’s skin.

For his part, Talion keeps quiet and stealths over to one of the fort walls. The spikes might be a deterrent for most, but he’s able to use a little wraith magic to jump over the worst of them and climb the rest of the way up. He has to wait for a while, clinging to the edge of the stone, before there’s a break in the patrols. From there it’s only a matter of staying out of sight as he moves from roof to roof, edging ever closer to the courtyard.

It might be hard to grab one of them without sounding the alarm, which he really does not want to do at this point in time. Not until he can scope out the area and figure out what to do about the warchief. But the overseers aren’t always surrounded by their underlings, and he figures he should be able to quickly brand one as soon as they step away.

He finds a roof with good cover away from the archer’s sightlines, close enough to the courtyard that he can keep an eye on the movement there, and prepares to wait it out. Uruk work long hours, having the stamina to stay on their feet days on end. But he’s no longer human himself, so waiting for a little while he plans out how to take down the fort isn’t too much of a hardship.

He settles in and prepares to wait. And wait.

—

With another camp to their name—and a fleet of caragors to fill it—it becomes obvious why Takra is keeping the pink skin around. Not that any of them were going to argue, since, you know, it’s Takra.

But not having to fight off fifteen or so caragors made the fight a lot easier, and now all they have to do is raid the camp for supplies and settle who’s going to take over the outpost. And cook up all the meat before it rots too much.

Shub winces as the sound of bone cracking filters through the bustle of the camp. The pink skin is sitting by the fire, crushing what looks like finger bones in a bowl. At her side, Takra is keeping one lazy eye on the camp as he picks apart a corpse. Shub has no idea what she’s doing with the bones—can’t be for eating, since she doesn’t seem to care for the marrow—but the sight of finger bones breaking just brings to mind the few he’s lost when she first showed up.

He rubs the scarred flesh of his knuckle across his teeth and turns to the hunter next to him.

“So’wats their deal, then?”

The hunter glances up, hand almost nonchalantly pushing away the large head of a caragor attempting to gnaw on his skull, and snorts.

“Don’know. Captain don’t much have use for slaves, says they’re too much work. Think she’s a pet or somethun?”

Shub coughs, diggin teeth into the soreness of his hand.

“Makes things easier, ye? That, uh, what’s she call it, catmint soap? Was useful,” he mutters, starting to gnaw at the joint. “Surprised no one’s made a stink of it though.”

The hunter snorts.

“Wouldn’t mind a bit for this brute here,” once again pushing away a head very keen to chew on his bones, “but even then, I don’t wanna be the one to say no to the boss. Or to her, either. She’s small but her teeth are sharp.”

Both of them turn their attention to where the pink skin is now chastising Takra for something or another. Takra for his part just puts one large arm on her head and pretends to sleep. This doesn’t seem to stop the human from continuing her yelling.

Shub spits out the broken piece of knuckle that was bothering him and laughs.

“Don’t I know it.”

—

Lûgdash closes the door the the warchief rooms and smacks his forehead on the rough wood. At his back Rûg wipes the blood off his axe and doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by what just passed. Maybe he isn’t, although Lûgdash isn’t sure how one can’t be bothered by the idea of tribal interference coming into the area.

There’s a reason the tribes are kept so close to the Dark Lord’s reach. And it isn’t just that they are more powerful.

With power comes independence, and a lot of the tribes are borderline traitorous most times. They care more about personal power than the cause, which to be fair, is something most Uruk share. But they actually have the means to do something about it.

Bottom line, they’re dangerous.

“Stop whining,” Rûg grunts, with what sounds like him sheathing the axe finally. Lûgdash closes his eyes and clicks his teeth, refusing to be baited into another fight. He’d lose, anyway.

“This is the reason I didn’t want to be warchief in the first place. This sort of attention is deadly,” he mutters, slamming his head again in hopes of beating the headache out.

A hand grabs his shoulder and slams him around, lungs squeezing painfully as air escapes him in a gasp. Lûgdash blinks up at the form of Rûg looming over him, one hand on the door near his ear and the other digging claws into the meat of his left arm.

“You are no coward,” Rûg rumbles, as if that's a truth he can will into being. Lûgdash scoffs.

“Of course I’m a coward—I’m clever! You do not get to be this clever by rushing into battle.”

Rûg leans down, eyes brighter than coals peering into his face, and Lûgdash has to restrain himself from shaking. As it is, bile is coating the inside of his mouth.

The other captain—well, he supposes that isn’t true anymore. Only one of them is a captain anymore. Rûg rumbles wordlessly, the vibration traveling into Lûgdash and making him shiver.

“You are not afraid of _me_ ,” he says, as if Lûgdash hasn’t been running and hiding the whole time they’ve known each other. He has to trap another scoff behind his teeth.

“You are not,” Rûg says again, leaning down so the points of his teeth are barely scraping against Lûgdash’s neck.

He swallows.

“That’s rather big headed of you,” he mutters, staring straight ahead, “you’re only one Uruk, no matter how strong. You aren’t even from a tribe.”

Teeth dig into flesh and he just makes out a chuckle against skin in between the shudder that travels down his back.

“Aren’t I?”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to ask me to tag more things...I cant seem to think of anything at the moment, but that's probably because the shame has eroded my sensibilities.


End file.
